Two of the artist’s oldest surviving works spent years hidden behind construction boards before resurfacing at the entrance to Art’otel
There is something genuinely strange about standing in the entrance porch of a boutique hotel, being greeted by two of Banksy’s oldest surviving works, a giant knife and fork wielding rat and a television being thrown through a window, both painted more than twenty years ago on a wall behind what used to be the Foundry bar on Old Street, both now carefully preserved, professionally lit, and functioning essentially as premium hotel signage.
How These Particular Pieces Survived At All
The two stencils were originally placed on the wall behind the Foundry back in 2004, remaining visible for roughly three years before being covered over with construction boards, then briefly uncovered again in 2019 during preparatory work for what eventually became the drum shaped Art’otel development. Rather than being lost entirely, as so much other early Shoreditch street art has been, these two pieces were deliberately preserved and repositioned above the hotel’s main entrance when it finally opened.
The Foundry’s Loss, Briefly Remembered
The Foundry itself, the bar these works were originally created for, closed back in 2010 and was demolished, a loss artist Gavin Turk, one of the Young British Artists who exhibited there, described at the time as symptomatic of Shoreditch becoming as commercialised as the West End, with nowhere quite managing to replicate the specific creative energy that space had fostered. Reading that quote now, more than a decade on, feels less like hyperbole and more like an accurate early diagnosis of exactly where things were heading.
Why Preservation Through Commercialisation Feels So Uncomfortable
There is a genuine tension in celebrating the fact that these Banksys survived at all, given how much other early Shoreditch street art has simply been painted over, demolished, or lost to redevelopment over the years, while also acknowledging that their survival came specifically because a hotel developer recognised their value as a marketing asset rather than because anyone involved shared the original countercultural spirit the work was created in.
What Happened To The Rest Of The Scene Nearby
The broader area around Great Eastern Street, which once hosted a genuinely significant concentration of street art in surrounding car parks and hoardings, has seen much of that work gradually replaced by exactly the kind of hotel and office development the Art’otel itself represents, part of a longer pattern where redevelopment hoardings temporarily become their own kind of ever changing canvas before the finished building simply removes the opportunity entirely.
Other Survivors Worth Knowing About
A handful of other early pieces have fared somewhat better through more deliberate community protection rather than corporate preservation, including the Guard Dog stencil on Rivington Street, now kept behind perspex, and Belgian artist ROA’s monumental crane on Hanbury Street, which local residents have informally protected for years without any hotel developer’s involvement at all, a genuinely different, arguably more honest model of preservation than the Art’otel’s.
The Word Shoreditchification, Earned
The broader pattern this illustrates, creative people move into a cheap, derelict area, their work draws attention and eventually galleries and bars, property values rise, and the artists get priced out, has become common enough globally to earn its own term, Shoreditchification, coined specifically to describe what happened here first and has since repeated in cities worldwide.
Where I Landed On It
I am glad these two particular pieces still exist in any form, and I remain genuinely conflicted about exactly what form that ended up being. Further history on the neighbourhood’s street art evolution has been documented thoroughly by Inspiring City, and more of my own walks through the area’s changing walls live at my author page on The London Prat.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
