Say what you like about HM Courts & Tribunals Service (on second thoughts, don’t), but when it really wants to fix a bit of damage to its estate, it moves at a blazing pace. On Monday, the elusive graffiti artist Banksy unveiled a new work on the Queen’s Building of the Royal Courts of Justice in Carey Street.
Within hours, the depiction of a full-bottomed wig judge wielding a gavel with intent to wound had been barricaded off under the eyes of RCJ security guards. On Tuesday, it was tackled with a high-powered cleaning spray. When this failed to remove the entire outline, the wall was taped up with what looked like bin liners, with guards still in attendance. Yesterday, the faint shadow (pictured) was still drawing crowds.
Predictably, the incident, along with the police suggestion that Banksy would be charged with criminal damage, made headlines. An Evening Standard columnist defended the artist, but conceded why the powers-that-be took urgent action. ‘Crowds of people outside a working court in central London would be a security issue. Round-the-clock surveillance would be required to keep the art thieves away. And almost nobody wants a largeish chunk of a Grade I-listed building to end up on the black art market.’
In a leading article, the Telegraph observed that the work’s creation ‘narrowly’ amounted to a piece of criminal damage. ‘So it would be too, if the Poet Laureate spoiled your piece of paper with a well-turned sonnet.’
Gazette columnist Joshua Rozenberg had a more serious objection. In his A Lawyer Writes Substack, he wrote: ‘Banksy’s greatest outrage is to coarsen public debate.’
No comments yet