{"id":547781,"date":"2026-03-18T06:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T06:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/547781\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T06:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T06:08:08","slug":"banksy-has-been-unmasked-again-but-does-this-major-reuters-investigation-actually-tell-us-something-new-banksy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/547781\/","title":{"rendered":"Banksy has been unmasked (again). But does this major Reuters investigation actually tell us something new? | Banksy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Kelly, everyone is talking about Banksy<\/a> (again) \u2013 what\u2019s he done this time?<\/p>\n

Hi Nick. So a really long (8,000-word) investigation by Reuters<\/a> claims it has discovered the elusive street artist\u2019s true identity, which backs up claims made by the Mail on Sunday British tabloid<\/a> almost two decades ago that he is a 52-year-old Bristol-born man called Robin Gunningham, now going by the name of David Jones.<\/p>\n

Wait \u2026 didn\u2019t we already know that? Or was it supposed to be the guy from Massive Attack?<\/p>\n

Sort of. Previous reports suggested that Robert Del Naja, the co-founder of Massive Attack \u2013 a pioneer in trip-hop, which is a music genre that also has its roots in Bristol \u2013 was Banksy<\/a>. Now it seems that Naja is Gunningham\u2019s secret partner\/enabler\/scout\/gatekeeper.<\/p>\n

Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack performs in London in 2016. Photograph: Dave J Hogan\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Gotcha. So what did Reuters uncover in the way of evidence? Is there a smoking gun? Or a rat (ahem) in the ranks?<\/p>\n

No rat, just a rat-faced Banksy scaling a Manhattan brownstone to deface a Marc Jacobs poster back in 2000. This wasn\u2019t a piece of expertly stencilled political art, it was a clumsy attempt to paint \u201cgoofy buck teeth\u201d on the implausibly perfect face of a male model. The cops caught him in the wee hours of Saturday morning and he obviously wasn\u2019t clear-headed enough to do what rogue street artists always do in these situations \u2013 sign a fake name to a confession to avoid a felony charge. He signed the confession Robin Gunningham and copped a $310 US fine for \u201cdisorderly conduct\u201d. Reuters uncovered the NYPD report 24 years later.<\/p>\n

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And then there\u2019s the Ukraine connection \u2026<\/p>\n

The Ukraine connection?<\/p>\n

Reuters went on a reverse forensic journey. It found that after the first 2008 unmasking by the Mail on Sunday, all evidence of Robin Gunningham\u2019s existence vanished \u2013 no tax records, employment records, property filings, zilch. In 2022 a bunch of Banksy artworks had started appearing on bombed out buildings in Ukraine<\/a>. Reuters checked the immigration and border control records and found out that Robert Del Naja had entered the besieged country around the same time. Aha! Back to the Massive Attack link.<\/p>\n

A Banksy work on the wall of a destroyed building in the Ukrainian town of Borodianka. Photograph: Gleb Garanich\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Naja\u2019s travelling companion was someone called David Jones, whose birthdate happened to match the date of birth listed for Gunningham on the 2000 New York arrest file. There are about 15,000 blokes called David Jones in the UK (most of them probably living in Wales), so what better way to go off the grid by adopting a name so aggressively average it functions as a human camouflage.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it\u2019s famously hard to keep up with the Joneses. Oh, and I get it, \u201cRobin BANKS\u201d. Groan. It all fits together. This all sounds pretty convincing. Are you convinced? Does it fit with what we knew so far?<\/p>\n

It may not have a red dot on it yet, but I\u2019m prepared to have the evidence framed and mounted in the Louvre (once they\u2019ve overhauled their security<\/a>). It backs up a lot of what Banksy\u2019s previous manager, Steve Lazarides<\/a>, wrote in his two-volume chronicle Banksy Captured, published in 2019 and 2020, including the admission Bansky indeed was the artist caught in the act in New York<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Banksy\u2019s longtime lawyer, Mark Stephens, told Reuters that Banksy \u201cdoes not accept that many of the details contained within your enquiry are correct\u201d. It\u2019s not exactly a denial.<\/p>\n

A Banksy rat stencil asking \u2018I\u2019m out of bed, what more do you want?\u2019 in Los Angeles. Photograph: ArtAngel\/Alamy<\/p>\n

And don\u2019t forget there\u2019s also that old BBC recorded interview that resurfaced 20 years later in 2023<\/a>, where the interviewer asks Banksy if his real name is Robert Banks, to which the artist replies: \u201cIt\u2019s Robbie.\u201d OK, so that doesn\u2019t rule out Robert Del Naja (who also uses the street name 3D) but take a look at the Massive Attack album covers Naja himself has illustrated. They\u2019re plain creepy, like a pharmaceutically induced nightmare. Banksy\u2019s work can be politically acerbic, but it\u2019s grounded in wit and whimsy \u2013 more likely the product of some tender-hearted dweeb who gets wasted in New York and paints goofy teeth on billboards.<\/p>\n

If it looks like a Robin<\/a>, sounds like a Robbie, and travels to war zones as a Dave, it\u2019s probably Gunningham.<\/p>\n

Why should we care?<\/p>\n

We probably shouldn\u2019t. The greatest trick Banksy ever pulled wasn\u2019t making a painting shred itself; it was disguising a middle-aged bloke from Bristol, probably with kids and a mortgage, as a global urban guerrilla, laughing at us behind his comfy Marks & Spencer hoodie for the past 30 years.<\/p>\n