New Banksy artwork appears outside the High Court in London
The artwork shows a judge using a gavel to attack what appears to be a protester.
By Nick Reilly
A new artwork from Banksy has appeared outside the High Court in London.
The new graffiti mural was first spotted on Monday morning (September 8) and shows a judge swinging a gavel as they attack someone lying on the floor, holding a sign covered in blood.
The anonymous street art icon confirmed he was behind the image on Instagram, captioning it: “Royal Courts of Justice. London.”
Subsequent photos on social media reveal that the mural has since been boarded up, with security guards standing nearby to guard it.
Though Banksy is yet to reveal the meaning – and rarely comments on the inspirations behind his own work – the new mural has been widely interpreted as a comment more than 900 arrests that were made over the weekend during a pro-Palestine rally in London.
The arrests came during a show of support for the group Palestine Action, which was listed as a proscribed terror group in July after two members trespassed on a British military base and defaced two aircraft with red paint. The decision to proscribe the group has been hugely controversial and is the subject of ongoing legal action.
It’s the first major artwork from Banksy to emerge in London since a series of of nine artworks of animals by the artist appeared across nine different locations in August 2024. They included three monkeys hanging from a railway bridge in Brick Lane and a pair of pelicans which were painted above the sign of a fish and chip shop in Walthamstow.
Earlier this year, Blink-182 vocalist Mark Hoppus also auctioned off a rare Banksy painting he had owned for over a decade.
The street art icon’s Crude Oil (Vettriano) was acquired by Hoppus and his wife Skye in 2011 and sold in March for £4.3 million.