Who is Banksy? Everything we know about his identity

The identity of street artist Banksy may finally have been revealed, according to an investigation by Reuters.

Impressed by a painting of a man scrubbing his back in the bath, placed in the wreckage of a building in war-torn Ukraine, journalists from the news agency set out to find out how Banksy did it, and who he really is.

The investigation led Reuters to an arrest record in New York from September 2000, when Banksy was believed to have been in the city for Fashion Week.

These records reveal Banksy’s identity as Robin Gunningham, Reuters claims, although following a piece in the Mail on Sunday in 2008 claiming to picture the artist, the name has since appeared to have been wiped from public records.

This, according to Reuters, suggests Banksy could have changed his name to continue operating without raising suspicion among authorities.

Banksy’s lawyer said his client “does not accept that many of the details” in Reuters’ account and insisted the artist remain anonymous to protect his privacy and safety.

What does the latest investigation into Banksy tell us?

Looking through “Banksy Captured”, a two-volume account of Steve Lazarides’s time managing the artist from the late 1990s to 2008 gave Reuters some crucial leads in its investigation.

Lazarides wrote of Banksy’s time in New York, when the artist was said to have become intrigued by a billboard advert on top of a brownstone apartment building bearing the slogan “Boys Love Marc Jacobs”.

Gallerist Ivy Brown, who at the time represented Lazarides in his photography career, told Reuters how she gave him and Banksy an earful about how she thought the billboard “defaced” her apartment building.

Banksy is then said to have climbed to the roof of the building and altered the image, adding eye shadow, a mouth with missing teeth and a speech bubble that was left empty, as he was caught in the act by the NYPD.

While Lazarides wrote about the incident, he didn’t mention when it happened or the building’s address.

However, Reuters geolocated the building in the photos Lazarides published and referenced it with the date the Marc Jacobs billboard was up to unearth police documents and a court file.

Reuters says it found a confession signed by Robin Gunningham, a name that was also brought up in a 2008 Mail on Sunday investigation into Banksy’s identity.

Gunningham was charged with a misdemeanour and forced to pay a fine of $310 (£247).

On his bail form, he gave his address as 160 E. 25th Street, the location of the Carlton Arms Hotel, which over the years has let artists stay for free in return for decorating their rooms.

Archived pages of the hotel website indicate that in 1997, Banksy painted a mural at the hotel. In 1999, the site shows, he finished an entire room, 5B. The hotel site attributed the works to “Robin Banks” – a play on “robbing banks,” later shortened to Banksy.

Banksy appears to have changed his name after a 2008 Mail on Sunday piece including photos of the man “believed to be Banksy”.

While the article was not conclusive proof, it also identified him as Robin Gunningham, an artist from Bristol who was born in 1973 and attended the Bristol Cathedral School.

After that piece, Reuters said the “trail went cold” with no traces of Gunningham found in UK public records, suggesting the artist hd “gone off the grid”.

“There is no Robin Gunningham,” Lazarides later told Reuters, “The name you’ve got I killed years ago,” he said of Robin Gunningham. Searching for him would be “a straight dead end”.

Before quitting as Banksy’s manager in 2008, Lazarides said he arranged a legal name change for his client, adding that there was no hidden meaning or pun, suggesting it was a very common sounding name.

Searching through and cross-referencing public records, Reuters narrowed down on the name David Jones.

A David Jones crossed the Polish border into Ukraine on October 28, 2022, according to a source familiar with immigration procedures, who said the date of birth listed on Jones’ passport was the same as Robin Gunningham’s birthday.

The source says he entered Ukraine on the same day and location as photographer Giles Duley and Massive Attack frontman Robert Del Naja, a friend of Banksy’s who has previously been rumoured to be the artist himself.

Records also indicate that Jones left Ukraine on November 2, 2022, the same day Del Naja departed.

Duley, whose Legacy of War Foundation donates ambulances to local NGOs in Ukraine, was publicly thanked by Banksy after painting the murals for lending him an ambulance to travel in the region.

Does this confirm Banksy’s identity?

Banksy’s long-time lawyer, Mark Stephens, told Reuters that Banksy “does not accept that many of the details contained within your enquiry are correct.”

He didn’t elaborate further on this, and without confirming or denying Banksy’s identity, Stephens urged Reuters not to publish its report, saying that doing so would violate the artist’s privacy, interfere with his art and put him in danger.

Stephens wrote that for years, Banksy has been “been subjected to fixated, threatening and extremist behaviour.”

Working “anonymously or under a pseudonym serves vital societal interests,” he wrote. “It protects freedom of expression by allowing creators to speak truth to power without fear of retaliation, censorship or persecution – particularly when addressing sensitive issues such as politics, religion or social justice.”

Others have theorised that “Banksy” could be the face of a collective of artists.

Speaking to Yahoo News in September, Stuart Nolan, chairman of the Law Society’s Criminal Law Committee, said this possibility makes it harder for police investigating the artist’s graffiti to narrow down on a suspect.

He said: “Who is Banksy… If it is Banksy? Is it somebody mimicking Banksy? Is Banksy one person, is Banksy a committee?

“Does Banksy’s rotate so that, you know, ‘Thursday I’m Banksy, next Thursday Mr B’s Banksy, or Mrs A’s Banksy?’

“In order to get a case in front of any court, you have to have a perpetrator or a group of perpetrators. So, at some stage somebody either has got to come forward and say, ‘Yes, I did that, arrest me’.

“From a policing point of view, I think it’s a task almost impossible, it seems to me.”

How has Banksy remained anonymous?

Since emerging onto the scene in the early 1990s, Banksy has sought to keep his identity a mystery, often wearing masks in the rare interviews he does.

The general assumption is he lives in or near Bristol, but other than that, very little is known about him.

He also never reveals the place he will be doing his next artwork, which is often only noticed after members of the public circulate them on social media.

In November 2023, it emerged Banksy “revealed” his name in an unearthed BBC interview from 2003.

Former BBC reporter Nigel Wrench interviewed Banksy ahead of his Turf War show in east London and asked if he could include his real name. He queried if the name was Robert Banks, to which he replied: “It’s Robbie.”

How does Banksy make money?

Banksy generates income through various means, despite his anonymous persona and unconventional approach.

Part of his persona even rejects the concept of “commercial success” and he has in the past encouraged people not to buy his work.

Speaking to Village Voice in 2013, the artist said: “Graffiti art has a hard enough life as it is, before you add hedge fund managers wanting to chop it out and hang it over the fireplace.

“For the sake of keeping all street art where it belongs, I’d encourage people not to buy anything by anybody, unless it was created for sale in the first place.”

Despite this, he has still likely made a significant sum of money from his work.

He has published several books in his time, including best-seller Wall and Piece, and likely generates royalties from that.

Banksy also directed an award-winning documentary called Exit Through The Gift Shop, exploring modern and underground art, which generated more than £3m in profit.

On occasion, Banksy has offered the purchase of some of his art through Pest Control, which is the only way he approves of its sale.

His Cut & Run exhibition in Glasgow attracted about 180,000 visitors during its 10-week show: his first solo show in 14 years.

Where is Banksy from and how much is he worth?

Although it is hard to know where an anonymous artist is from, he rose to fame in the early 1990s with spray-painted murals on walls in Bristol and has stayed connected to the city and surrounding area ever since.

Banksy’s art is all over the world in London, New York City, Paris, Bethlehem and elsewhere.

It is difficult to guess how much the artist is worth, but his creations are estimated to be worth nearly £40m.

However, this valuation is based on the sale of his art which he has not condoned, and the profits usually go to the people who owned the site where the art was located.

Some of the profits of Banksy’s art may have made its way back to him, but no one knows for sure.