Reuters says it has identified the elusive British street artist Banksy as Robin Gunningham, a Bristol-born man who later used the name David Jones, following an extensive investigation that links immigration records, eyewitness accounts and past legal documents to murals the artist claimed in Ukraine in 2022.
The news agency’s probe centers on a series of stencil works Banksy posted on Instagram in late 2022 as his own, painted on shattered buildings around Kyiv. Witnesses in the village of Horenka told Reuters an ambulance arrived at a bombed-out apartment block and a small team, some masked, carried stencils, taped them to a wall and spray-painted a scene of a bearded man in a bathtub amid the ruins. One of the men was unmasked; another, documentary photographer and war charity founder Giles Duley, had one arm and two prosthetic legs. Banksy later publicly thanked Duley for lending him an ambulance in Ukraine.
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Border records cited by Reuters show Duley and Robert Del Naja—the Massive Attack frontman and a longstanding Banksy rumor target—entered Ukraine from Poland on Oct. 28, 2022, shortly before the murals appeared. On the same day and at the same crossing, a “David Jones” entered the country using a passport listing the same birth date as Gunningham’s, a source familiar with Ukrainian immigration procedures told Reuters. A man with the name David Jones departed Ukraine in November, the agency reported. Reuters said it found no evidence that Gunningham or other rumored candidates traveled under their own names during that period.
Del Naja, a Bristol graffiti pioneer known as 3D, has often been floated as Banksy. Reuters reports that he was not the artist, though he has, at least once, painted with Banksy in secret. Witness reactions in Horenka were inconclusive when shown photos of rumored candidates, including Del Naja and Thierry Guetta, the French artist known as Mr. Brainwash, who appeared in Banksy’s 2010 film “Exit Through the Gift Shop.”
The agency also uncovered earlier paper trails that align with Gunningham. New York police arrested a man defacing a billboard atop 675 Hudson Street on Sept. 18, 2000, seeking felony charges due to damages exceeding $1,500. Court and police documents name the man who confessed as Robin Gunningham—his name appears repeatedly alongside his signature, Reuters reported.
Separately, a 2004 run-in with Jamaican photographer Peter Dean Rickards nearly pierced Banksy’s veil. Though Rickards did not identify the artist by name, he posted 21 images of Banksy at work, 14 showing his face. In 2008, The Mail on Sunday first connected that face to Gunningham, identifying him—citing an anonymous source—as a Bristol-born artist educated at Bristol Cathedral School. Archived school magazines noted Gunningham’s artistic prizes and an early comic strip, details that mirror Banksy’s nimble mix of art and theater. At the time, Banksy’s manager denied that a widely circulated photo depicted the artist.
Banksy and his inner circle have long declined to discuss his identity. Associates have signed nondisclosure agreements or stayed quiet out of loyalty—or fear of antagonizing the artist, his fervent fan base and Pest Control Office, the company that authenticates Banksy’s work and controls access to new pieces, Reuters said.
Banksy’s once-illicit stencils—simple in form, sharp in social commentary—now rank as cultural landmarks that fetch tens of millions of dollars. In one poll, he eclipsed Rembrandt and Monet in British popularity; another named “Girl with Balloon” as the nation’s favorite artwork. His most notorious stunt came at Sotheby’s in 2018, when that painting began shredding inside its frame moments after sale, later retitled “Love is in the Bin” and resold for about $25 million.
The Reuters investigation underscores that Banksy confirmed only the Ukrainian artworks—not his identity. But the agency’s synthesis of travel data linked to the David Jones alias, eyewitness accounts around Kyiv, and documentary evidence from New York and Jamaica adds the firmest public footing yet to what the British tabloid press first advanced 16 years ago: that the world’s most famous anonymous artist is Robin Gunningham of Bristol, a man who slipped behind a new name even as his work entered the canon.
Neither Banksy nor Pest Control Office responded to requests for comment in the Reuters report. Del Naja did not claim to be Banksy. Whether Gunningham still uses the David Jones name is unclear.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
