Thanks for the links Stephen and Mike. Interesting.

No

Have to say Vermin have put up a decent 'for' arguement.

Cue angry mobs saying street art is for the streets, history of street art says otherwise though

where's the statement from a little bird gone? 'CuriousGeorge' I suggest you get curious about 'Droit Morale' before you assert that Vermin have an argument for authenticating the work of a living artist...

what would happen if u sent a legitimate street piece to pest control now? obviously they would't authenticate it, but they couldn't say it was fake either, so anything other than a email saying its fake means its legit

For those who don't know - A definition of Droit Morale is: "An artist's moral right to be identified as the creator of a work (Attribution), the right to decide when and where to publish the work (Disclosure), the right to withdraw a work from circulation (Withdrawal), and the right to preserve the integrity of the work (Integrity)." The work being 'illegal' has no relevance on the fact that any living artist has the right to withdraw a work from circulation and to assign an official body to authenticate work. (you don't know me George).

I've just had an interesting (and rather frustrating) conflict of interest that centred around above, with another artist (not Banksy). For me the difficulty comes when the situation is in the context of installation work, that is done on private property and cannot ever be considered street pieces. As a result never for the public to see, this for me has the same resonance and relavance as any other work that the artist exectues. Also within the context of street artists it is madness for their to be no authenticated "street"work in collections of street artists, otherwise you only have half the picture.
I also feel that whilst it is wrong to remove work from the street, if you own the building / door / wall that the artist decided to work on, they then have a responsibilty to subsequantly authenticate said work for that owner, should they want to sell. To deny knowledge after defacing something (however beautifully) is done completly at the expense of the person who'se property it is on. Whilst most on here would welcome Banksy to come and work on their home, would you welcome every street artist? I know I wouldn't - I feel that there is an inherant hypocracy of wanting to elicit an emotional reaction and then refuse to take responsibilty for it. I understand that artists do not want to get arrested, but I am more talking about work done in private that at a later point is denied (I think this may have happened with the Blur album wall, but could be wrong).
Is this down to the artists? Or is this down to primary galleries advising their artists? I feel it's a bit of both.

It annoys me that they charge £50 for each print, I personally have 5 prints brought from source some worth more than others.
I have email conformation from Dora on all the pieces why should I pay £250 if I wish to sell them (hopefully I won't)?
Also I just purchased the penny print from POW and still they don't do COA!! Why?? BRP do this well and they won't need to set up a PC for Nick etc.
Why won't POW do this now?? Its not that hard!

how many on here have submitted print details to pest control and found out that the print was fake?

i would have expected there to be a decent proportion of the 137 on here. i know that there have been people on here who have discovered their prints were fake but i haven't noticed anybody saying that it was discovered while the prints were being authenticated by pest control.

is there anything to stop the person offloading on here in that situation? is that why there haven't been any/many examples?

It's a free market and if Vermin can find mugs to buy their verification more power to them, but you have to be an idiot to buy a Vermin verified work. Unless it has rock hard provenance (the artist has acknowledged production of the work) you are going to have real problems if you ever try and sell it. If you just like the piece and never intend to sell it then the authentication is irrelevant anyway.

I've emailed pest control a couple times. Exerts from the emails are below.

I did notice that they items from ebay I sent them got shill bid up to ridiculous prices. I figured they did this themselves to annoy the seller. I now know not to bother them with street pieces or anti war signs, they will not authenticate at all.






Hello,

Thank you for your authentication request. None of the pieces in the
images provided would receive a Letter of Authentication. The top four
are not by the artist Banksy. They will be registered as fake. The
'Wrong War' piece cannot be submitted for authentication because it
was not made with the intention to sell as a work of art. It was made
for an anti-war protest. Further to this there are a number of fakes
in circulation and it can not be verified without bringing it in.




Thank you for submitting your authentication request. There are a
huge number of fake street pieces in circulation and the piece would
need to be looked at 'in the flesh' to verify it being genuine.
However pieces taken from the street are not considered works of art,
the artist believes they should remain in their context and they were
not created with the intention to commercially sell. Therefore street
pieces are not granted authentication for sale.

Kind regards

Pest Control

That's absolutley right.

Is it not also true in the case of the body that authenticates Warhol's works that they have not authenticated pieces worth many millions that were previously authenticated by the body previously responsible for doing so. Controversially its allegedly rumored they have a vested interest due to the extent of their own collection of Warhol pieces.

here you go:

cgi.ebay.co.uk/BANKSY-LAUGH-NOW-REPRODUCTION-SCREEN-PRINT_W0QQitemZ300226266824QQihZ020QQcategoryZ360QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

banksyforum.proboards82.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=ebaychat&thread=20036&page=1