A new Banksy mural that shows two children lying down and looking at the sky has appeared in west London.
The artist revealed he was behind the artwork above a row of garages on Queen’s Mews in Bayswater by posting a photo of it to his Instagram account on Monday afternoon.
A second, identical artwork appeared outside the Centre Point tower in central London last Friday, but Banksy’s representatives have yet to confirm its provenance.
Speaking to the BBC, the artist Daniel Lloyd-Morgan said he believed the Centre Point location was chosen to make a point about child homelessness.
“There are a lot of children who are not having a good time at Christmas,” he said, adding that people walking past the artwork were “ignoring it”.
“It’s a busy area. Quite poignant that people aren’t stopping. They walk past homeless people and they don’t see them lying on the street,” Lloyd-Morgan said.
“It’s kind of like they’re stargazing. It’s quite fitting that the kids are pointing up like they’re looking at the north star.”
The Bayswater mural has also appeared outside Centre Point in central London. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
Centre Point tower has long been a symbol of homelessness crisis. It was left empty for more than a decade after being completed in 1966.
The name of the homelessness charity Centrepoint was inspired by the tower, with its founder, Rev Ken Leech, calling the building “an affront to the homeless”. The block is now multimillion-pound flats.
Jason Tomkins, a Banksy expert, also thinks the mural is a “clear statement on homelessness” and told the BBC he believed it depicts the same little boy catching snowflakes with his tongue seen in a Banksy artwork that appeared in Port Talbot in 2018.
“This is quite unusual for him to use the same little boy again, because he has never done that,” Tomkins said.
