This piece comes from Dismaland, the project Banksy set up in the summer of 2015 in the English town of Weston-super-Mare. For five weeks the artist ran what he called a “bemusement park” there: a faded castle, an overturned pumpkin carriage, sullen faced staff, and the promise of fun turned entirely on its head.

The subject of this piece is a real police riot van on the site. Reduced to scrap, the vehicle had been turned into a piece of play equipment for children at Dismaland, something to climb on and slide down. Banksy turned this scene into an image: a battered, disused riot van, children playing on it, and a colourful rainbow arching over the vehicle.

The contrast speaks for itself. A riot van is one of the most concrete objects representing the state’s power over a crowd, a machine with wired windows and sealed doors, built for the single purpose of suppression. Turning that same vehicle into a slide says something about how temporary and how removable that power really is. The rainbow turns the scene into almost a page from a children’s book, which is exactly why it is unsettling.