They seek him here, they seek him there, but if Banksy was anywhere near Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery yesterday he was keeping a typically low profile.

The world’s most elusive artist has taken over the largest museum in his home town and filled it with more than 100 of his iconoclastic creations. But was the perfectionist Banksy on site as the finishing touches were put to the exhibition yesterday?

Outside, a blond man in his thirties wearing new trainers watched visitors going in and out. Was he the artist taking a break? Perhaps the only suspect for an artist who likes to portray himself as a rat was a terrified mouse trapped beneath a paper cup in the Egypt gallery.

From his beginnings as a graffiti artist on Bristol’s streets, Banksy has become one of Britain’s most soughtafter artists. An anthology of his recent work is the world’s bestselling art book.

The exhibits installed in the gallery are his way of giving something back to the city he grew up in, according to the museum’s director, Kate Brindley. She was first approached last October, and sworn to secrecy. Just four of the museum’s staff knew of the plans.

Ms Brindley said: “We gave the staff a couple of days off and said we were filming. We were taking a huge risk because no one has spoken to Banksy, it’s all been done through his agents.”

Visitors to the free exhibition, which runs until August, will be greeted by a burnt-out ice-cream van. A dummy riot policeman wearing a balaclava and a badge which reads Metropolitan Peace is making his getaway from the carnage on a fairground horse.

Exhibits have been infiltrated into the galleries alongside the museum’s own works. A stone Buddha sits on a plinth with a broken arm and a neck brace, Old Masters have been adapted to include flying saucers or characters bursting out of the frame. In one typically Banksian pun, Dorothy and Toto from The Wizard of Oz are painted on a sheet of rusting iron with a speech bubble saying: “I don’t think we’re on canvas any more.” There is an original Damian Hirst spot painting defaced by a rat with a paint roller. A stencilled picture shows an African orphan with a bucket saying: “Peaches Geldof — please give generously.”

Banksy claims that he has to maintain his anonymity for “legal” reasons. In the press release accompanying the exhibition, he said: “Maybe one day graffiti art will hang in lots of museums and be viewed in the same way as other modern art, although personally I hope it never sinks that low.”

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