Reposted from The Guardian

Detectives arrested a man last night on suspicion of the theft of a Banksy Street sign worth up to £500,000 that was stolen in London less than an hour after being confirmed as a genuine installation. The Metropolitan police said they had deployed detectives to investigate after a council in south-east London asked them to help find the stolen artwork. The piece – a red stop sign with three military drones on it – appeared on the corner of Commercial Way, Peckham, on Friday morning – with Banksy confirming its credentials just after midday. However, footage on social media showed two men with a bolt cutter appearing shortly afterwards to carry out a brazen theft, making no attempt to hide their identities as witnesses filmed them. Footage shows one of them wrenching the sign off the post before running away clutching the artwork. The Met said earlier in the day: “We have received a report of theft and inquiries are ongoing. This incident is being investigated by officers from the Met’s central south CID.” Later they said that a man, arrested on suspicion of theft and criminal damage, remained in custody and investigations were ongoing. Jasmine Ali, from Southwark Council said yesterday: “I have every confidence they will get it back. We are not just talking about a street sign here, it is a work of art which was put there for the community. It is street art, and it is for the people.” It also emerged that the council had already replaced the road sign to avoid potential traffic accidents. Ulrich Blanché, a street art expert at Heidelberg University in Germany, believes the installation’s location in Commercial Way close to a funeral director, along with the drones – which appear to be military Reapers – suggests a critique of the global arms trade. 

Many of Banksy’s Instagram followers interpreted his latest work as calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. One gallery owner has said the artwork could be worth up to £500,000. John Brandler, whose Essex gallery sells Banksy’s works, said: “It could easily be higher. The media attention has made it more valuable.” Similar drone art appeared at Banksy’s Walled Off hotel in Bethlehem in 2017, which the artist said had “the worst view of any hotel in the world” – in a reference to Israel’s controversial wall in the West Bank. The artist has installed other pieces this year including Valentine’s Day Mascara, a mural weighing 3.8 Tonnes that appeared on the side of a house in Margate, Kent. It depicted a 1950s housewife with a swollen eye and missing tooth, wearing an apron and yellow washing-up gloves, and throwing a man into a chest freezer. In September it was placed in the foyer of The Art of Banksy exhibition in central London, where it can be viewed for free.

See Original Post