I bet some people do know who shouldn’t and have signed NDAs when they’ve threatened to out whoever it is. Surely?
I don't think he has managed to. I think, much like the stig, the media knows exactly who he is but the regular stories about the mystery make them more money than outing him would as a one off.
It’s definitely Rob Del Naja from Massive Attack. I really like Banksy, his artwork is extremely thought provoking and creative. Art doesn’t need to be intricate or realistic to be cool. I follow him on Instagram and some of his work including videos are top notch.
Back in the mists of time, my first job was at Bretton Hall - for the youth of today, it was an arts/teaching college until it went bust - and as befits such as establishment it had paintings and other works of art scattered around the building. When they took one of the paintings down for maintenance, they found it had been hung upside down for the best part of 20 years and nobody had noticed... That was around the time when someone rocked up one night with a big lorry and made off with a Henry Moore weighing several tonnes...
Andy Warhol's most famous works are also stenciled, but I'm not sure if that diminishes them in any way, either artistically or culturally.
Bretton became part of the University of Leeds if I remember right and they shut the campus down along with Manygates, as they did with Ripon (which they did partly through my degree before it was handed over to York St John). It is a shame really but was due to financial pressures as you say.
Although his name has been well documented I still think it’s definitely Del Naja. The connection to Bristol, Massive Attack gigs (particularly in the early days) and lastly Goldie naming him last year when talking about Banksy. Goldie will definitely know who it is. Here’s a thought though that there’s now a team of people including Gunningham and Del Naja
I went on a street art tour of Bristol last year - absolutely amazing. I think he's brilliant, we live in a drab post-industrial city-scape of cookie cut buildings and brutal 60s soviet style monsters - at least most of Europe rebuilt their cities to the plans of the middle ages, we thought we could do better - see Coventry for the results......Putting art work on public display to brighten up these public spaces is genius - unlike all those private art collectors who take the master pieces and put them in their private collections. And he's spawned a whole new Art genre of others doing similar- its like taking Graffiti and giving it rocket fuel.
If its from the time he said something about him "flipping the art world over", I heard him say Rob rather than Robert as the papers quoted. Who knows, I wouldnt be surprised if the two of them are involved edit: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-40379603
He/She is brilliant, very topical and some thought provoking pieces, NHS heroes etc. I don't think you can compare it to the artless tagging you see on every other building/structure in certain parts of towns and citie. That is worse than dog ****.