World-famous graffiti artist Banksy has concluded his animal trail, after nine days of pop-up artworks dotted around the capital ended with a piece on the shutters of London Zoo . Although all the surprise pieces have now been unveiled, speculation over the inspiration behind them persists. What do they mean, and how have they been received by the art and graffiti worlds? Banksy's final piece, outside London Zoo in Camden, north London, shows a gorilla lifting the shutter to release a sea lion and birds, while other animals appear to look on from the inside.
But the series of artworks was set in motion with a piece on 5 August appearing to show a goat perched on a ledge as rocks fall on a wall in Kew Green in Richmond, south-west London. This was swiftly followed on 6 August with a work depicting two elephants reaching for each other’s trunks, and three monkeys hanging from a railway bridge in Brick Lane, east London, on 7 August. By day three, online speculation was rife as to whether the series had a deeper meaning.
Perhaps the goat was a metaphor for standing on the edge of a moment of change, or the two elephants were reaching across from different sides of something? Maybe the three monkeys represented the "wise monkeys" in the Japanese proverb of the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" fame? Theories have ranged from the series focusing on social division amidst recent riots, to the Israel-Gaza conflict . James Ryan, CEO of Grove Gallery which sells Banksy orig.