This artwork is the first in the nine day animal series Banksy started in London in August 2024, and it was, in a sense, the flare that set off the whole chase.

It appeared on 5 August 2024 on the tall facade of a building near Kew Bridge, at Kew Green in south west London. The image is simple: a single goat, perched on a narrow ledge high up on the wall, looking down. Small stones fall from under its feet, and what would happen if the goat took one more step is left entirely to the viewer’s imagination. According to reports, a security camera stood right beside the composition, pointed directly at this fragile moment.

The choice of a goat is not accidental. Goats really can climb onto rock faces that look completely unreachable, living right on the edge of balance. When Banksy takes this natural ability and places it on an urban facade, the image turns into something else entirely: a position that has risen high, but has lost its ground beneath it, with a single step separating it from a drop. Some read this as economic insecurity, some as the housing crisis, and some simply as the general instability of modern life.

What happened to the piece afterwards is just as interesting as the piece itself. The building it was on was already set for a major, long planned renovation: a new floor, a new roof, structural work. To avoid losing the piece in the demolition, the building’s owners hired a professional conservation firm. In early February 2025, roughly six months after the piece appeared, the stencil was carefully removed from the wall under the supervision of a picture conservator and taken to a conservation studio in Carlisle, Cumbria. There, the surface was cleaned with a tested solution and the plaster layer was reinforced so it no longer risked breaking apart. The piece is now being kept in safe conditions, awaiting return to its owners.

This shows very clearly the paradox facing street art today: an image that is meant to be unauthorised, temporary and belonging to everyone becomes, from the moment it appears, an asset that has to be protected, insured and transported.

Goat set the tone for the whole series: no political slogan, no text, just an animal in the wrong place, and a single question forming in the viewer’s mind, namely, how did it get up there, and what happens next?