This is one of Banksy’s best known works that bring cinema together with street art. It reinterprets the most iconic scene from Quentin Tarantino’s legendary film Pulp Fiction, the famous pose in which John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson’s characters walk forward holding their guns. Banksy takes this scene and replaces the guns with bananas.

The piece was painted on the side wall of a building in the Old Street area of London and became one of Banksy’s most photographed street works in the early 2000s. But its story took a dramatic turn. In 2007 Transport for London painted over it and destroyed it. The decision caused a huge public backlash.

Banksy’s response reflected his characteristic irony. Instead of recreating the piece, he simply left a text on the same wall, a piece of writing that criticised Transport for London’s action.

The power of the Pulp Fiction image lies in taking a familiar moment from popular culture and replacing it with an element that strips the violence out of it completely.

This piece is a striking example both of the skill of integrating popular culture references into street art, and of how fragile public art can be.