After a goat, pelicans and a cat, graffiti artist Banksy's animals, which have been appearing daily on the streets of London for a week and sometimes quickly disappearing, were joined by fish, which turned a glass cabin into an aquarium.
The mysterious British street artist unveiled new works every day this week via his Instagram account, sparking speculation about their significance and a race to see who would be the first to discover the next one.
On August 11, a glass booth used to house police officers regulating traffic in London was found covered in fish resembling piranhas, giving it the appearance of an aquarium.
The animal frenzy began on 5 August with the appearance of a goat perched on the chimney of a facade in the west London borough of Richmond.
The next day saw elephants peering out of boarded-up windows in the upmarket Chelsea district, then monkeys hanging from a railway bridge in Shoreditch, then a wolf howling from a satellite dish on a shop front in Peckham, pelicans fishing over a restaurant window in Walthamstow, and then a cat stretching across a billboard in the north-west of the capital.
The aerial with the wolf was quickly removed by three masked men, and the billboard with the cat was dismantled to boos from the crowd shortly after it was discovered.
The workers told British media they were sent at the request of police for security reasons due to the high traffic at the site.
The daily appearance of these animals has sparked intense speculation about their significance. Some have cast doubt in relation to the recent far-right riots, the Gaza conflict, the climate crisis or even the Olympics.
But for Sunday's The Observer, the aim is more prosaic: by creating surprise and amusement, the aim is to boost public morale at a time when the news is grim. | BGNES
