Banksy artwork removed within an hour of its authenticity being confirmed

A Banksy artwork was removed from a south London street less than an hour after it was confirmed to be an original installation.

The artist confirmed the work to be his in a social media post shortly after noon on Friday, which features a stop sign covered in three aircraft that supposedly resemble military drones.

Two men were seen removing the sign at the junction of Southampton Way and Commercial Way in Peckham at around 12:30pm.

It is believed that Banksy is not behind the removal.

This is not the first time that a Banksy artwork has been removed shortly after it was created.

A 3.8-tonne mural titled 'Valentine's Day Mascara' appeared on the side of a house in Margate, Kent, on Valentine's Day this year and was removed several hours after Banksy shared a series of photos of it online.

The mural depicts a 1950s housewife with a swollen eye and missing tooth, wearing an apron and yellow dishwashing gloves, throwing a man into a freezer.

The resident of the property where the painting was created, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the PA news agency at the time that the freezer and other items, including a broken garden chair used in the artwork, were removed “very quickly” and loaded into a truck.

In September, the mural was installed in the foyer of the exhibition “The Art of Banksy” on Regent Street in central London.

The exhibition featured pieces such as “Girl With Balloon,” “Flower Thrower,” and “Rude Copper,” and focused on Banksy’s “Dismaland,” the “Walled Off Hotel” in Bethlehem, and more recent works acknowledging the ongoing war in Ukraine.

This year, a limited-time exhibition celebrating 25 years of Banksy's stencil graffiti also opened at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) in Glasgow.

“Cut & Run” included authentic artifacts, ephemera and the artist’s toilet, as well as a model explaining how the artist cut “Girl With Balloon” during an auction at Sotheby’s in London in 2018.

In August, a message on cutandrun.co.uk said organizers now “want to take the show on the road but have no idea where to go next.”

The artist often refers to current issues and incorporated messages about the coronavirus pandemic into his work in 2020.

Transport for London (TfL) removed spray paint from a London Underground carriage as part of its so-called “strict anti-graffiti policy”.