An image of a rhino appearing to mount a rundown silver Nissan Micra with a traffic cone on its bonnet appeared in southeast London on Monday and was confirmed as a Banksy on the artist’s Instagram account.
Later that evening, a man wearing a balaclava and holding a can of white paint was filmed spraying a tag on it while the crowd shouted, “Don’t do that.”
By Tuesday morning, the car had also been removed.
A spokesperson for the Royal Borough of Greenwich, the local authority where the rhino mural was located, said: “It’s a real shame that a mindless vandal has defaced the mural, which has already drawn visitors and brought so much joy to many.”
The crowd booed and jeered at the masked individual as he casually walked away.
While his exact motives remain unclear, the act has certainly generated a lot of attention for whatever the “$V” tag is meant to reference. Streetwear? An attempt to gain notoriety? Maybe I’ll go conspiratorial and suggest that Banksy himself could have orchestrated the whole thing.
