SEASONS GREETINGS

A White Christmas

On 19 December 2018, Banksy confirmed Season’s Greetings, painted across two perpendicular walls of a private garage in Port Talbot, the South Wales town dominated by one of Britain's largest steelworks. On one wall, a small child stretches out his arms and opens his mouth to catch what appears to be falling snow. Turning the corner, however, reveals the source: a burning industrial skip whose ash is drifting toward him.

The corner of the building is essential to the work. Seen from the child's side alone, the image appears almost sentimental—a familiar scene of childhood excitement at Christmas. Only by moving around the garage does the illusion collapse. Snow becomes pollution and Christmas innocence becomes an environmental warning.

Port Talbot

The location made the image particularly pointed. Port Talbot's skyline is dominated by its steelworks, and in the summer of 2018 residents had reported black dust from the plant settling across homes, cars and streets. Banksy's own video confirming the work deliberately rose above the garage to reveal the industrial landscape and steelworks beyond it.

Season’s Greetings therefore works on two scales. It is an immediately understandable image about air pollution, but it is also deeply site-specific. The real industrial landscape surrounding the garage completes the composition just as decisively as the burning skip painted on its wall.

From Garage to Artwork

The mural rapidly became a local attraction. Garage owner Ian Lewis, himself a steelworker, subsequently sold the work to art dealer John Brandler for an undisclosed six-figure sum. In May 2019, engineers cut away the two adjoining walls as a single structure, reinforcing them with resin and a steel frame before lifting the work by crane and relocating it to Port Talbot town centre.

In February 2022, after several years on display in Port Talbot, the work was removed and transported to England for storage while a longer-term home was sought.

The removal preserved Banksy's image, but inevitably changed it. Season’s Greetings was conceived around a real corner, in a real industrial town, within sight of the steelworks whose pollution gave the image its meaning. What first appears to be snow is ash—and the architecture forces the viewer to discover the difference.