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Banksy has shared a video featuring American artist Bob Ross confirming that the Reading prison artwork that mysteriously appeared earlier this week is his.
The picture, which emerged on Monday morning (March 1), shows a prisoner – resembling famous inmate Oscar Wilde – escaping from the prison using a rope fashioned from bedsheets tied to a typewriter.
Now, Banksy has uploaded a comical video to his Instagram account, which you can view below, in which he confirms the artwork is his and named it the Create Escape.
The clip begins with the now-familiar image of the curly-haired 1970s American TV painter Ross whose programmes are currently making a comeback on BBC4.
Banksy’s video then cuts from Bob Ross to the Bristol artist himself, spraying the artwork on the wall of Reading Prison.
It comes as campaigners rallied for the former jail to be transformed into an arts hub instead of being sold off for housing.
The jail famously hosted Oscar Wilde’s incarceration between 1895 and 1897, which inspired his stirring poem Ballad of Reading Gaol – an uncompromising look at the brutal reality of life behind bars in Victorian England.
Banksy’s most recent public mural emerged in his native Bristol in December 2020, depicting a woman sneezing out her false teeth.
It marked the latest in a series of murals Banksy has unveiled since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
In October 2020, the elusive artist confirmed he was behind a mural depicting a girl hula hooping with a tyre which appeared in Lenton, Nottingham.
He also previously spray painted graffiti artwork on a London Underground train with rats pictured sneezing across the carriage and wearing face masks.
Banksy also celebrated the health workers of the UK in a sketch that portrayed them as superheroes during the ongoing battle against COVID-19.
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