As towns across the U.K. rush to install Christmas decorations, one festive mural in a London suburb has attracted national attention for all the wrong reasons. The A.I.-generated artwork—rumored to be the work of YBA provocateur Mat Collishaw–shocked local residents with its “nightmarish” scenes, which included a deformed snowman and monstrous Santas amid a large crowd of revelers with unhinged grins.

Confused members of the public had been left to guess at the bizarre mural’s possible meanings, with commenters on Reddit describing it as “disgraceful” and “a bleak sign of the times.” In the face of mounting backlash, the shocking work was torn down last week.

The large mural had been installed by the owners of Riverside Walk, a mall in the southwest London borough of Kingston upon Thames. The local council said it had no part in planning or funding the public artwork.

A man walks past a Christmas mural installed along Riverside Walk in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London in November 2025. Photo: Justin Tallis / AFP via Getty Images.

A spokesperson for the private developers claimed that the mural was “inspired by the work of Pieter Brueghel the Elder,” according to London Centric, which first reported on the controversy. The 16th-century Flemish artist is known for sprawling, heavily-populated scenes that are admired for their many vignettes revealing the everyday activity of Medieval village life.

The work has also drawn comparisons to the fantastical worlds of Hieronymous Bosch and the macabre chaos of Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19).

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow (Winter), 1565. Art History Museum, Vienna. Photo: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.

Like much A.I.-generated imagery, however, the Christmas mural in Kingston lacked any clear governing logic. The disturbing scene appeared to contain large troops of men with misshapen bodies and contorted faces attempting to skate over shallow, foamy waters. Elsewhere, groups filled an infeasibly large wooden boat. Heavily-disfigured dogs bounded about, some appearing to transmogrify into birds. In the background, wooden huts suggestive of a Christmas market were partially engulfed in flames.

Bizarre AI Christmas mural above London restaurant REMOVED after merciless mocking https://t.co/5XSxMx6zd1 pic.twitter.com/pwKw8pOItq

— Standard News (@standardnews) November 20, 2025

More seasonal touches included a snowman with three eyes and a toothy smile, and the slumped figure of Santa Claus peering bleary-eyed from behind a log.

Two anonymous sources informed London Centric that the ominous A.I. artwork was made by Collishaw, who is best-known for his association with the Young British Artists movement of the 1990s. His work was included in Damien Hirst’s 1988 “Freeze” exhibition, which propelled many of its participants toward widespread notoriety, as well as the highly-controversial but legendary “Sensation” exhibition, which opened at the Royal Academy in London in 1997.

More recently, Collishaw has experimented extensively with A.I. One 2023 exhibition at London’s Kew Garden was described by Guardian critic Jonathan Jones as evoking the “apocalyptic horror of a charred world.” If Collishaw did produce the Christmas mural for Kingston’s Riverside Walk, it would not be his first commission for the mall. In 2021, it opened his permanent outdoor installation Echolocation.

Mat Collishaw did not respond to a request for comment.

A man walks past a large mural installed ahead of the Christmas season, along Riverside Walk in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London in November 2025. Photo: Justin Tallis / AFP via Getty Images.

The Christmas mural may have been a piece of newly-commissioned contemporary art, but Londoners were not impressed. “There were a lot of complaints and it’s been a big talking point,” a local restaurant manager told the Metro. He noted that a similarly strange mural featuring distorted seafood had been installed in the same spot over the summer.

A local teacher told the paper that he observed large groups of viewers gathering before the mural. “It became a kind of landmark,” he said. “But not in a good way. It was horrible, like a scene from hell.”

According to London Centric‘s report, meanwhile, many locals interpreted the artwork as a comment on desperate migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats. “There’s clearly something political about it,” another restaurant manager told the platform. He said that some had interpreted the overjoyed men piling off of overcrowded boats as propaganda in favor of asylum seekers. Others saw it as mocking their plight.

The Christmas mural was permanently removed from Riverside Walk at 6 a.m. GMT on November 20.