Urban Art Association

Street deals: the business of buying Banksy, by shaunyboy on Feb 15, 2010 19:24:23 GMT 1, www.channel4.com/news/articles/arts_entertainment/art/street+deals+the+business+of+buying+banksy/3542337

As the most famous street artist on the British scene Banksy is having trouble keeping dealers from exploiting his brand. Nicholas Glass follows two friends trying to bag a Banksy deal.


There's no one quite like Banksy – the only street artist most of us have ever heard of it.

Aside from the mystique that surrounds his identity (the Daily Mail claims to have unmasked him) his rise from the streets has brought him into conflict with the art market. One Notting Hill dealer accuses of him of being a control freak.

Our little excursion into the Banksy market was instructive.

Banksy has an outfit to sell his prints, Pictures on Walls in Commercial Street, and a sister organisation, Pest Control to authenticate everything. He has an agent and a publicist.

He’s a folk hero, with a passionate following on the web but quite a few people must know who he is.

We talked to several people who have met him. He was described, in awe-struck tones, as an antisocial genius. People were nervous of causing any offence.

At one time or another, Banksy has been matey with Damien Hirst and Damon Albarn. He probably still is. Hirst has been a patron.

Most respect his desire for privacy. And arguably rightly so. There’s evidently an inner circle, a team of helpers.

But like it or not, Banksy is also a brand and he seems happy to exploit this.

At his homecoming show in Bristol City Museum last summer, he was selling the work. The art critics/ correspondents (including myself) who trained down to Bristol on the opening day, didn't seem to be aware of this. Banksy is believed to give a lot of money to charity.

These last few months, Banksy has been absorbed in a new art venture, a movie he’s financed and directed himself, "Exit through the Gift Shop" (directing movies is what artists do these days – Steve McQueen, Sam Taylor-Wood).

He’s showing his movie on the Film Festival circuit, Sundance and Berlin.

He’s marketing it in the Banksy way. At Sundance he stencilled rats, here and there around town. Absorbed in his movie, he didn’t want to be bothered by the story that absorbed us.

Two lads from South London, Bradley Ridge and Nick Loizou have been mates since primary school. Bradley, a café owner, began collecting Banksy prints awhile ago, and encouraged Nick, a builder, to buy his first print in December.

Late last year, they became rather more ambitious in their collecting.

One September afternoon in broad daylight, Banksy stencilled an image of punk rocker, puzzling over the instructions to an Ikea flatpack on a wall in Croydon. The piece was site specific – near the Croydon Ikea Store.

It appears on Banksy’s website as "Large Graffiti Slogan". We assume Banksy must have spotters, to advise him and recce possible places where he can do his stuff.

Bradley and Nick learnt about it a month or so later and quickly hatched a plan to "rescue" it. The wall had been heavily "tagged" by other street artists.

The boys bought the wall (it was on a site owned by a cement company). They wouldn’t say how much they paid. Then over nine long days and nights, they cut it out.

The wall was made of reinforced concrete – nine inches thick, three tons in weight. A special one ton steel frame was made to hold it. A special crane was needed to lift it onto a lorry.

The boys couldn't resist taking a punt. They were both well aware how valuable anything by Banksy has become.

Nick Loizou, the builder, thinks the wall may be worth £500,000. But there is a fundamental problem – Banksy doesn't like people profiting from his street pieces.

They were intended for the street, to fade, to be "tagged", to be left to their fate (invariably a council painting crew).

Pest Control, which is a relatively new organisation, exists to help stamp out the burgeoning trade in Banksy fakes. But it’s also refusing to certify street pieces. And without a certificate, selling them is difficult.

But a few dealers and collectors are defying Banksy.

The feeling is they’ve helped his auction prices, and should be allowed to trade in street pieces which are manifestly by him.

Cheekily, this group of dealers/ collectors set up their own authenticating body, Vermin, but it has had no impact.

Robin Barton runs a small gallery, Bankrobber in Notting Hill. Merchant bankers just love signing cheques to Bankrobber, he says.

Robin Barton tried to sell some street pieces through the auctioneers, Lyon and Turnbull in London in 2008. The pieces had Vermin certification, but nothing from Pest Control; they didn’t sell.

Mr Barton and Pest Control are evidently not on very friendly terms. But Mr Barton, a persistent man, is still dealing in street pieces.

He's currently trying to sell a large plywood work, "Gallery Attendant/p*ick" through the Keszler Gallery in New York for $700,000. The gallery claims to have found a buyer.

We were made aware of a number of Banksy street pieces that people are hanging onto in the belief that one day they will be able to sell them.

A Yorkshire farmer has a Banksy of a television set crashing out of a window. It was stencilled onto his concrete duckshed in 2003, and used in a picture shoot for Blur for Observer Music Monthly.

The farmer has tried to sell it a couple of times. Banksy did a practise stencil – on a door, and that did sell at auction before Pest Control existed.

As for our boys, Bradley Ridge ad Nick Loizou, they seem optimistic about their chances.

They’ve had the Ikea punk cleaned up, "detagged" by a specialist conservator. They’ve spent about £30,000 extracting, moving and cleaning the wall.

They seem to believe that someone will want to buy it – a seminal trophy Banksy. We approached Banky’s publicist for a comment about their endeavour. The response was "no comment.

We followed the wall from Croydon to the New Covent Garden Market where it was initially stored, and on to the conservator’s studio in Faversham in Kent.

Ikea punk, as we like to call him, is now in an undisclosed location in the North of England.

He’s much travelled.

A small word of advice, if you’re thinking about buying him, reinforce the floor.