I visited the new Banksy on Hornsey Road on Day 3, which proved the optimal time.
On Days 1and 2 it had been rammed with people crowding round the railings, so getting a decent photo was difficult.
On Day 4 someone chucked white paint over part of the artwork closest to the road and the original was scarred.
But on Day 3, i.e. Tuesday of last week, it was pretty much as intended.
A splash of green paint all over the end wall of a four storey building. A small green figure holding a hose, which had supposedly sprayed the aforementioned paint. A heavily pollarded cherry tree at one end of a railinged lawn outside a block of postwar council housing. And a vantage point at the entrance to Christie Court from which it looked like the green paint formed the leaves of the bare tree.
You either like this sort of stuff or you don't, and if you don't then nobody's forcing you to head to Finsbury Park and deliver a sermon on perceived inadequacies. But it's certainly more interesting than the blank wall that was here before and which nobody would have travelled a long distance to see, let alone en masse.
Later on Day 3 Islington council came along and erected metal barriers around the lawn because the railings had proved too easy to clamber over. You could still take photos of the artwork, either up close to the new fence or further away with a grey blur, but the morning of Day 3 was really the optimum time.
On Day 10 a new barrier appeared - a perspex screen covering the majority of the original artwork and entirely wrecking the view. I thought I'd go down and have another look.
It was now Day 11, and improbably yet another barrier was in the process of being added.
This time it was a chipboard screen, specifically around the tree and the area of lawn directly underneath the artwork. Two blokes from Hillingdon Fencing had turned up and were busy nailing together several panels to create a private corral to deter further incursion. They were both coming under intense scrutiny from those watching, some of whom had evidently flown in from abroad, but were also good natured enough to use spectators' cameras to take the occasional photo from their side of the fence.
Because I turned up mid-job I didn't see what the end result looked like. But I've seen reports and the intention is that the gaps in the chipboard wall will be filled with clear plastic panels. What a depressingly obstructive state of affairs.
The perspex across the mural was actually installed by the owner of the wall, a local independent estate agent. People who suddenly inherit Banksys have a tendency to do this to protect their windfall, which could be worth hundreds of thousands, even if this instantly destroys its attraction as an artwork.
In this case the screen's a right mess with a wooden frame as well as clear plastic sheeting, the timbers crossing the artwork once vertically and twice horizontally. Also it doesn't reach to the top of the greenery, so I suspect if you had a bucket of paint and a good aim you could probably still cause significant permanent damage.
The new hoarding on the lawn is courtesy of Islington council, an upgrade to the railings added last week. According to a council spokesperson "The Banksy artwork has attracted huge crowds and there is a need to protect the art and local residents from the impact of visitor numbers. To give people more security and privacy, and to protect the tree, we’re installing a hoarding which will include clear plastic panels to protect the artwork and allow clear views."
It can't be much fun living next to an unexpected Banksy if it's not your building it's been painted on. That's especially true once the initial novelty's died down but the crowds keep on coming, because nobody wants strangers congregating outside their window on a tiny lawn that was never meant for access. As for the need to protect the tree it already looks pretty much savaged by the council pollarder, but a laminated sign saying "Please do not climb" does suggest general marauding has been overintense.
As for the council's idea that large plastic panels will still allow an appreciation of the work, that's plainly laughable. They reflect light, they refract and they get dirty, so will ruin any view or photo you might be intending to take. They're also only in place around part of the hoarding, plus the view from the pavement is already skew and doesn't create the intended illusion of a tree anyway.
Had you stood at the far end of the lawn on Day 2, as sightlines intended, you'd have seen green paint resembling foliage behind a pollarded tree. If you stand in the same place today you first see metal railings, then a chipboard hoarding, then just the top of the tree, then a plastic screen and finally the green paint on the wall, partially splattered. So degraded is the view that it's barely worth turning up to see any more.
It's amazing how often a new Banksy looks like a welcome gift to a rundown neighbourhood but swiftly descends into a wealthgrab by the lucky recipient and a miserably obscured experience. But Islington's great Banksy cover-up is undeniably worse than usual thanks to joint overprotectiveness from both the owner and the council. Always get there by Day 3, never after Day 10.
