A artwork on the shutters of London Zoo has been removed for "safekeeping" and to allow the popular attraction to use its full entrance. The piece, showing a gorilla lifting up a shutter to allow birds and a seal to escape, has been replaced with a replica. The painting was the across London in as many days earlier this month.
A sign posted nearby reads "Banksy woz ere" and apologises to fans of the famous street artist. When the work was first discovered, the zoo used a Perspex cover to “protect it from the glare of the sun”. Announcing the removal on Sunday, London Zoo said it was “still working on exactly what we’re going to do with the artwork, but we’re keen to properly preserve this moment in our history”.
Two of the other pieces in the series, including the silhouettes of elephants in Chelsea’s Edith Grove, have been defaced and another was stolen just hours after it was put up. Banksy’s works across London since 5 August included a rhino mounting a silver Nissan Micra car with a traffic cone on its bonnet in Charlton’s Westmoor Street, a police sentry box in Ludgate Hill transformed into a giant tank of piranhas and a pelican stooping to scoop up a fish on the sign of Bonner’s Fish Bar in Walthamstow. The rhino work was defaced by a man wearing a black balaclava just hours after it was publicly announced, while the silhouette of a wolf howling on a satellite dish was taken from a roof in Peckham.
The sixth piece, a stretching cat on an empty, distr.