In March 2023, a new Banksy piece appeared at Blacksole Farm near the town of Herne Bay in Kent, England, on a boarded up window of an old farmhouse due for demolition. It showed the silhouettes of a small child and a tiny cat beside them.

The most original part of the piece was the way it brought the existing building material directly into the composition. Banksy bent the corrugated metal sheets that were covering the window outward, creating the effect of a curtain being drawn aside. This simple but effective move turned an industrial boarding material into an everyday, domestic scene.

However, the piece in its original form did not last long. The crew tasked with demolishing the building started work on 14 March without realising what was on the wall, and destroyed it before Banksy had officially confirmed the piece. When the workers realised what they had demolished, they tried to rescue fragments of the wall from the rubble.

Banksy announced the piece on his own Instagram account on 16 March, with three photographs in sequence: first the finished piece, then the whole farmhouse, and finally the demolished rubble. This way of presenting it made the destruction of the piece part of the piece itself.

The title comes from the well known hymn “Morning Has Broken”, but Banksy removes a single word and reverses the meaning: breaking instead of dawning, dissolution instead of renewal. The small cat figure immediately adds warmth and intimacy to the scene, which makes the impact of the demolition even stronger.

Morning is Broken points to a method Banksy has used increasingly often in his recent work: leaving the piece open to reading as a comment on vanishing homes, displacement or urban dissolution. The fact that the piece’s own destruction became part of the artist’s narrative shows that Banksy treats impermanence and demolition not as separate from a piece’s meaning but as something that feeds into it.