For decades, Banksy kept the world guessing. The Bristol-born graffiti artist, whose works have sold for millions, built an empire on anonymity. Now, a detailed investigation hints that the mystery might be over.
According to the investigation, published on Friday by news agency Reuters, Banksy’s real name is Robin Gunningham, a 51-year-old from Bristol, England. And the way he stayed hidden was very simple. In 2008, Gunningham legally changed his name to David Jones.
“It is one of the most popular names in Britain,” the Reuters report states, “so common it helps him hide in plain sight.”
How Was His Identity Revealed?
Reuters did not arrive at this conclusion through a single breakthrough, it came after a series of revelations. The investigation started in Ukraine.
In late 2022, three people arrived at a bombed-out building in Horenka. One wore a grey hoodie, one a baseball cap, and the third, Giles Duley, a well-known photographer, walked on prosthetic limbs. Together they painted a mural of a man in a bathtub on the damaged wall. That image became the starting point for a multinational investigation.
Reuters reporters returned to Horenka with a photo lineup. The suspects included Thierry Guetta, the artist known as Mr Brainwash, Robert Del Naja, the frontman of British band Massive Attack, and Robin Gunningham.
A local resident picked out Del Naja, not Gunningham. An immigration source then confirmed that Del Naja and Duley had both entered Ukraine shortly before the murals appeared.
The most concrete evidence came not from Ukraine but from Manhattan, more than two decades earlier.
Banksy’s former manager, Steve Lazarides, had published books containing behind-the-scenes photographs. Reuters analysed those images. One set of photos pointed to an arrest involving a fashion billboard in New York in September 2000.
Using the images, reporters geolocated the building to 675 Hudson Street. They matched an advertisement visible in the photos to a Marc Jacobs campaign running during New York Fashion Week that same month.
From there, they searched NYPD and New York court records for the relevant dates. What they found was a misdemeanour charge of disorderly conduct for defacing a billboard. Inside the court file was a handwritten confession and a signature. The name on every document was Robin Gunningham.
Gunningham is not a new name in connection with Banksy. The Mail on Sunday identified him as the artist back in 2008. But Reuters says its investigation goes significantly further, cross-referencing evidence across multiple sources rather than relying on a single identification.
The street artist whose works have made headlines, broken auction records, and appeared on walls from London to Los Angeles has never confirmed his identity. Banksy or his representatives did not accept or deny the report.Â
In 2008, the same year the Mail on Sunday first published his name, Gunningham made a move that would buy him another seventeen years of anonymity. He changed his name legally to David Jones.
There was no pun. David Jones is one of the most common names in the English language. According to the Reuters investigation, it is among the most popular male names in Britain, shared by tens of thousands of people nationwide.
The timing was deliberate. The 2008 Mail on Sunday report had put Robin Gunningham’s name into public circulation for the first time. By becoming David Jones through a legal name change, Gunningham ensured that anyone searching for him under his birth name would find a clue.Â
Ironically, world’s most famous anonymous artist was hiding behind the most common name.