Banksy's artwork removed from London Underground carriage for violating TfL's strict anti-graffiti policy

Banksy's new artwork in a London Underground train carriage has been removed by Transport for London as it violated its anti-graffiti policy.

The graffiti artist uploaded video captioned "If you don't mask - you don't get" to his Instagram and YouTube pages on Tuesday afternoon.

Footage showed Banksy spray painting stencils of his famous rats inside a Circle Line train for the artwork, which also referenced the Covid-19 lockdown.

A TfL spokesperson said “we appreciate the sentiment” but confirmed the work was removed due to a “strict anti-graffiti policy”.

The new art features a rat spraypainted on the tube
Banksy/Instagram

"We'd like to offer Banksy the chance to do a new version of his message for our customers in a suitable location."

The video on Banksy’s Instagram begins with a laptop playing PA Video footage showing the London Underground being deep cleaned in May.

Banksy - clad in a white boiler suit, mask, goggles, blue gloves and an orange hi-viz jacket with the message "stay safe" printed on it - climbs on board a train posing as a TfL worker.

The video shows him ushering a masked passenger to move back, before stencilling a rat using a blue face mask as a parachute.

Banksy's famous Girl with a Pierced Eardrum given a Coronavirus twist

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Another rat has a blue mask over its face, while one holds a bottle of hand sanitiser.

The video finishes with a message sprayed on the wall of a Tube station reading: "I get lockdown" with the doors of the Tube carriage closing to reveal the message "But I get up again".

Chumbawamba's song Tubthumping - also known as I Get Knocked Down - plays as the doors touch together.

There are two rats, one on each of the carriage's doors, looking at each other.

Banksy, from Bristol, has created a number of artworks during the coronavirus lockdown.

In April, he created a series of rats causing mayhem in his bathroom and posted the caption: "My wife hates it when I work from home."

Later that month, a large face mask was placed on his world-famous piece The Girl With The Pierced Eardrum on Bristol harbourside.

An artwork entitled Game Changer, showing an NHS nurse as a superhero toy, went on display at Southampton General Hospital in May.

In June, Banksy posted a piece inspired by Black Lives Matter with a caption, part of which read: "People of colour are being failed by the system."

The following day, a statue of slave trader Edward Colston was toppled by protesters in Bristol and thrown into the harbour during a Black Lives Matter march.

Banksy posted a sketch showing his idea for the empty plinth - retrieving the statue from the water, putting it back on the plinth with cables around its neck and life-size bronze statues of protesters pulling it down.

He finished the caption by stating: "A famous day commemorated."

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