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A new work of street art by the Bristol artist Banksy has been covered over and is being guarded after it appeared overnight at the rear gate of the Royal Courts of Justice. The artwork was visible for just a few hours this morning, Monday, and showed a judge hitting a protester with his gavel.
The artwork is thought to be a comment on the crackdown on protest – particularly the mass arrest of hundreds of people who express opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and support for the now-banned campaign group Palestine Action.
The work appeared on Monday, and was posted by the artist on his Instagram page late on Monday morning. The work is on the rear of a modern office building that forms part of the Royal Courts of Justice in The Strand in London, but is located around the back on Carey Street, with the Gothic Victorian court room complex right next door. The work, ironically enough, appeared right underneath a CCTV camera monitoring the rear gate entrance to the Royal Courts of Justice.
But by lunchtime on Monday, contractors from a security firm on behalf of the courts arrived and began covering over the work on the wall itself, and erecting metal barriers in front of it.
It’s Banksy’s first work of art in the UK for more than a year. In August 2024, he delighted Londoners with a series of cheeky murals featuring animals in unlikely locations around the city, and since then is only believed to have produced one new work of art – a lighthouse shadow effect work in a tunnel in the French city of Marseille, which appeared in May this year.
Although the street artist merely captioned this new work with its location – ‘Royal Courts of Justice, London’ – and gave no other clues about its meaning or motivation, it is almost certainly a comment on the crackdown on the laws around protests in the UK at the moment.
The work appeared after a weekend which saw hundreds of people arrested in London for expressing their support for the banned campaign group Palestine Action, who were detained under the Terrorism Act after the Labour Government controversially proscribed the group for its direct action tactics against Israeli-owned arms firms in the UK.
Among those arrested was Bristol vicar Rev Sue Parfitt, 83, who was one of 1,500 people who sat in Parliament Square with a placard that read: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”. She was among more than 425 who were arrested for taking part in that protest.
Also taking part in the protest on Saturday in London – although he was not arrested – was Massive Attack’s Rob del Naja, who gave interviews to media expressing his support for those taking part in the demonstration in Parliament Square.
There has long been speculation that Del Naja is in fact Banksy – although the musician and street artist burst onto the Bristol scene in the mid-1980s, while Banksy – who is younger – began spraying things in the city in the mid-1990s.
The elusive street artist’s last work of art in Bristol was now almost five years ago, with a work on the side of a house in Barton Hill to celebrate Valentine’s Day 2020 followed by the humorous ‘Aaachoo!’ work showing a woman sneezing at the bottom of Vale Street in Totterdown, back in December 2020.
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