Banksy has installed the works in Bristol's City Museum and Art Gallery inside a giant burned out ice cream van.

The van, which sits under a giant melted cone, appears alongside dozens of sculptures, oil paintings and his trademark stencils.

The exhibition, called Banksy versus Bristol Museum, consists of more than 100 items, including a sculpture of a riot police officer astride a child's rocking horse and a moving display featuring chicks as chicken nuggets.

Many of Banksy's works are hidden amongst the art museum's more traditional paintings, mimicking a 2003 stunt when he smuggled a work into the Tate Britain gallery in London and stuck it to the wall. It went undiscovered for hours.

Simon Cook, deputy leader of Bristol council who has responsibility for arts, said he was thrilled Banksy was back, despite his controversial nature.

"Everybody assumed it (his new exhibition) would be in Los Angeles, in New York, in London, but he insisted it came to Bristol... and it's just him coming home," Cook said.

"Banksy, who is rumored to hail from the Bristol area, but has never revealed his full identity due to ongoing legal complications, is mounting the show as a salute to the city, which supported his early street career," it read.

From small time graffiti artist to global star, Banksy's work has become so valuable that several of his street works have been salvaged and sold, including a painting on a wall in London that fetched 208,100 pounds ($340,000) in an online sale in 2008.

One of the highest sums paid for a Banksy at auction was 288,000 pounds for "Space Girl and Bird."