Street art fans, drivers, dog walkers and people wandering through a car park at a seaside resort in Somerset have been doing a double take today after this bit of stencil work appeared on a wall.
A passer-by said the artwork appeared overnight on Saturday into Sunday morning at the Oxford Street car park in Burnham-on-Sea, and already there is speculation that it could be the handiwork of Banksy.
The work cleverly utilises a garage door that slightly sticks out from a wall on the western edge of the town centre car park, and has a stencil of one child appearing to play hide and seek, while two others crouch around the corner of the garage door, slightly out of sight.
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There is no indication yet whether the work is by mysterious Bristol street artist Banksy or not – Bristol Live has approached his representatives for clarification, and is awaiting a response. Banksy usually announces new artwork around the world on his Instagram page, the only social media he publicly uses.
There has not been a new post on that account since he posted a video of comedians Frankie Boyle and Christopher Macarthur-Boyd giving a tour of Banksy’s ‘Cut and Run’ exhibition in Glasgow back in June. The last two works of street art Banksy created have both been in Kent, and the last work he created in Bristol or the West Country was ‘Aachoo’, painted on the wall of a house at the bottom of Vale Street in Totterdown, back in December 2020.
There have been Banksy-style works of street art in Somerset, and in Burnham-on-Sea before, the most recent in Bath sparked some speculation at the start of 2023. But the work in Burnham this weekend is unsigned, and unless it is claimed by Banksy or another street artist, its creator will remain a mystery.
Do you think it’s a Banksy? Let us know in the comments section below