Devolved Parliament (Banksy)

Devolved Parliament is an oil-on-canvas painting by Banksy, dated 2009, that replaces the British politicians debating in the House of Commons with chimpanzees. It measures 2.5 metres by 4.2 metres. It was titled Question Time when first shown at the 2009 Banksy exhibition at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, and it was sold to a private collector in 2011. A reworked and retitled version, with changes to details such as a banana and some lamps, was exhibited in Bristol in March 2019, when Banksy commented that one day no-one will be in charge. On 3 October 2019 it sold at Sotheby's in London for 9.9 million pounds, which made it the most costly Banksy to that date. The apes echo his 2002 stencilled work Laugh Now and belong to a chimpanzee theme that runs through his work as a satirical device in the tradition of the singerie, in which monkeys imitate human behaviour.