This artwork does not show the scene you might expect. There is no theatre box, no velvet curtain, no clapping audience. Instead there is the deck of an aircraft carrier.

A fighter jet stands on the runway of the ship’s deck. Beside it are two ground crew in yellow high visibility vests. Their job is normally to guide the aircraft and give the signal for take off. But one of them is holding something else entirely, a sign with the word “APPLAUSE” in large letters. It is the same illuminated cue that tells an audience in a television studio when to clap.

This single object changes the whole scene. The fighter jet is no longer a military vehicle, it is a guest on a show. Take off is no longer a mission, it is a stunt in a performance. And somewhere out there is the audience that sign is addressing, us, watching the war on screen and expected to applaud at the right moments.

Here Banksy is not targeting war itself, but the way war is presented. He targets how conflict is turned into a performance on the news, into a moment of pride, into a story of technological triumph, and how audiences are conditioned to applaud that narrative.

The technique is also worth noting. Instead of Banksy’s usual stencil method, this work uses photomontage, made with a contribution from the artist Peter Kennard. Kennard is Britain’s best known name in anti war photomontage, and that collaboration explains the piece’s visual language directly.