These never-before-seen photos show Banksy long before he became the shy superstar artist.
The teenage Banksy – whose real identity is former public schoolboy Robin Gunningham – is shown clowning around with classmates during a ski trip – and in another photo believed to be him, visiting the Berlin Wall before it came down.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the guerrilla stenciller, whose works have sold for millions, was spotted as a gifted artist even back then, when he attended the prestigious Cathedral School in Bristol having started at the then £700-a-term school in 1984.
His creative talents found an outlet not only in art classes, but also on the stage, where, according to school magazine The Cathedralian, he played an ‘Ant Commander’ in his first year in a performance of The Insect Play, and was feted as ‘commanding and having a stage presence’. The same year he was a regular in the Under 12 rugby team.
It’s tempting to wonder whether, had he chosen an acting career, Gunningham the actor’s name might be almost as well-known as Banksy the artist’s.
A teenage Banksy, third from the right, pictured with classmates from the elite Cathedral School, Bristol while on a school trip to Berlin
Banksy, whose real name is Robin Gunningham, was a pupil at the £700-a-term school
At the end of his first year he appeared in ‘Sitting on top of the world’, described as a ‘wry, witty comedy’.
Gunningham bagged one of the two lead roles, playing Bill, a builder, dangling atop a half-completed tower block.
The Cathedralian picked him out for praise, reporting: ‘Special mention must go to Robin Gunningham for [his] professional and clear performance.’
And he was one of two boys to receive a Junior Acting Award that year, along with an English school prize at ‘speech day’ held in the 12th- Century cathedral.
The acting continued into his second year at the school when he appeared on stage again as one of the deaf gentlemen in ‘Post early for Christmas’, a one-act comedy set in a busy Post Office and performed during a lunch break in December 1985. He followed that up in May 1986 by playing ‘Blue Eyes’ in a production of the musical Tin Pan Ali.
By 1987, Gunningham had moved onto debating and was a member of the Junior Debating Society earning the nickname ‘The Guru’.
In his third year, his artistic talent was recognized when his stylized sketch ‘The Time Traveller’ featured in the school magazine, signed with a distinctive ‘R’.
In the spring of that year, he went on the school ski trip to Bardoneccia, Italy, a resort known as ‘the Pearl of the Alps’ staying at the Hotel Sommellier with classmates and teachers.
Banksy went skiing with his classmates, pictured, several times while at school
Robin Gunningham and Robert del Naja from Massive Attack
Although his real name has been public knowledge for 15 years, thanks to a Mail on Sunday investigation, Banksy’s fawning fans connive to ignore this fact
The school magazine reported that ‘the Pizzeria/ Crêperie ‘La Fillande’ and the local café were the favourite watering-holes. Other aprés-ski delights included a disco and a five-a-side football evening’.
In July 1987, Gunningham took part in the end of term ‘Soiree Francaise’ – featuring ‘Sketches, Songs, Music, Wine, Cheese, Video’ performed to parents in French.
In March 1988 he returned to the slopes on the school ski trip to Marilleva, Italy, with other pupils on the trip including James Averis, a future Gloucestershire County Cricket fast bowler, who also played professional rugby for Bristol and Harlequins.
In 1988, Gunningham came third in the school art exhibition awards and and his cartoon strip ‘The story of Fred and the wheel’ was showcased in the school magazine. He was a key part of the hockey team. playing in goal and gathering a reputation for making spectacular saves. He continued in playing goal for the hockey team in his final year before leaving in 1989 after doing his GCSEs.
One former contemporary told MailOnline: ‘It’s odd to see these photos now as he was just another schoolboy back then, and while he obviously had artistic and acting talent, he was otherwise just one of the boys.
‘We were all rather surprised back in 2008 that we had been to school with this Banksy character, but the even bigger mystery was why people in some parts of the media and the art world continue to pretend that he’s anonymous.
‘I suppose it’s all part of the appeal and his works wouldn’t go for the ridiculous amounts that they do if he was plain old Robin Gunningham from Bristol.’
Banksy’s most celebrated and expensive work, Love is in the Bin, was sold in 2021 at auction for £18.6 million.
His Girl With Balloon image, which the work began life as, has been rated the ‘nation’s best-loved work of art’, more popular than John Constable’s The Hay Wain.
It was first sold in 2018 as a framed copy of the artwork, reaching £1,042,00, then a record high for his works.
Banksy’s Love is in the Bin artwork being auctioned at Sotheby’s, London, where it sold for £18,582,00 in 2021
Artwork in North London, attributed to guerrilla graffiti artist Banksy, is pictured on Essex Road in Islington on March 4, 2008
Moments after the closing bid, the piece began to self-destruct by means of a hidden mechanical paper shredder that Banksy had built into the frame bottom,, but unexpectedly stopped halfway.
Only the lower half shredded and Banksy posted an image of the shredding on Instagram with the words ‘Going, going gone.’
The woman who won the bidding at the auction decided to go through with the purchase, and it was retitled Love Is in the Bin, and authenticated, before fetching the much higher price three years later.
Michel Boersma, curator of exhibition The Art of Banksy, in London’s Regent Street, told the Mail last year he was ‘convinced’ that people don’t want to know the identity of this Robin Hood of art.
Flying Copper by Banksy, on display at The Art of Banksy exhibition on May 17, 2023
Instead of calling him by his real name – Robin Gunningham – there is a surreal omerta, with his true identity deliberately camouflaged
Love is in the Air (Flower Thrower) by Banksy
He said: ‘The public don’t want the mystery to stop because it’s a lovely fairytale. The art world doesn’t want his identity to be known because it would take away from the mystique – and mystique makes money.’
Gunningham left school at 16 and began dabbling in street art. The following year, as part of Operation Anderson, undercover police arrested 72 artists across Britain on criminal damage charges. Those arrested included Tom Bingle, a graffiti artist acknowledged to be Banksy’s partner in crime, who now runs his own art company called Inkie. He was acquitted.
Gunningham was not arrested and there isn’t any record of him being apprehended. But the artist has confessed he had by then become expert at evading police, helped by the fact that, until outed by the MoS, his name was a mystery. In his book Wall And Piece, Banksy said: ‘When I was 18, I spent one night trying to paint ‘late again’ in big silver bubble letters on the side of a passenger train. British Transport Police showed up and I got ripped to shreds running away through a thorny bush. ‘The rest of my mates made it to the car and disappeared, so I spent over an hour hidden under a dumper truck with engine oil leaking all over me.’
A section of a work Bansky created during lockdown in his bathroom. The artist captioned the social media post: ‘My wife hates it when I work from home’
Turf War by Banksy which features an illustration of Winston Churchill with a Mohican
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