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Season's Greetings by Banksy in Port Talbot

Banksy paints Season's Greetings mural on Port Talbot garage

British graffiti artist Banksy has created a satirical Christmas mural on a garage in the Welsh industrial town of Port Talbot.

The spray-painted work is wrapped around two corners of a garage in Taibach, an area of Port Talbot that sits between the M4 motorway and the Tata steel works.

When just one garage wall is viewed, the image appears to be a typical Christmas scene of a child enjoying the snow. The small boy has a sledge beside him and his tongue out to catch what could be falling snow.

When the viewer turns the corner and sees the full work, they can see that the falling substance is in fact ash emitting from an open fire in a recycling bin.

Banksy confirmed that the work was his by posting a video featuring the piece on his Instagram account, captioned with the message "Season's Greetings".

The video opens by panning down the image of the cheerful boy, showing his mittened hands and the sledge beside him, before pulling back to reveal the adjacent wall of the garage with its image of the fire burning in a standard-issue council recycling bin.

The camera then rises above the corrugated steel roof of the garage to show the chimneys of the steel works in the background, with the roofs of local residents' homes in between the two.

At the time of writing the video had been viewed more than 1.7 million times on the anonymous street artist's Instagram account.

Earlier this year, Banksy sent the art world into a spin when a work of his that was up for auction at Sotheby's in London self-shredded at the moment of sale, to the shock of those in the room.

Pest Control, the authentication body for the street artist who is careful to protect his anonymity, later confirmed that the shredded painting was an original artwork in its own right.

Banksy took to Instagram at the time, to hint that he was responsible for the destruction of the piece, with a video captioned "Going, going, gone..."

Photo courtesy of Getty.

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