Urban Art Association

Colony Room Club - Art For Sale, by Daniel Silk on Sept 24, 2008 10:05:15 GMT 1, www.thefirstpost.co.uk/people,1418,damien-hirsts-drinking-club-in-auction-row,46275

Damien Hirst’s drinking club row

For many decades Michael Wojas has run the Colony Room Club in Soho, a lively drinking hole whose patrons include art world luminaries such as Damien Hirst (pictured), Tracey Emin and, before his death in 1992, Francis Bacon. But now the Colony is set to close, allegedly because of spiralling rents in the area, and a ferocious row has broken out over the ownership of the valuable artworks that adorn the 60-year old club's walls.
Wojas, who announced his intention to retire earlier this year, has arranged to sell the works, which include a mural by English painter Michael Andrews valued by some at £50,000 (executed for the club, so legend has it, to pay off a bar bill), at the London auction house Lyon and Turnbull. According to his friends, this is to be his "pension pot". However, a breakaway group of members who are fighting to keep the club going are questioning his right to do this, claiming thar many of the works were given to the club not to Wojas.
It is turning very nasty indeed. The members are now demanding that either Wojas proves his title to the works on sale, which is to take place this Saturday and all of which are featured in a lavish catalogue prepared by Lyon and Turnbull, or withdraw them immediately. If he fails to do this, they say, legal action will be taken to have the disputed works removed from the sale.
Lyon and Turnbull's Philip Gregory is unbothered by the storm of protests, insisting the sale will go ahead. He said: "We have heard about the claims of ownership but we are totally satisfied about ownership and that the work is being sold with proper legal title".
One artist who disputes this is Sebastian Horsley, the flamboyant author of A Dandy in the Underworld, who is adamant that he donated his work, an oil painting of sunflowers which Lyon and Turnbull think will fetch circa £1,500, to the club. Yet despite telling the auction house this and asking for it to be withdrawn, they have refused to act. He says firmly: "I gave my artwork to the Colony Room not Michael Wojas. And there are many others who have work in the sale in the same position."
Whether Lyon and Turnbull will eventually accept this will become apparent soon enough - but this is not the only problem it's facing. In the same sale as the Colony lots are a number of salvaged street works by the graffiti artist Banksy (one is painted on a road bollard). Despite receiving complaints by the organisation set up to authenticate such works - called, appropriately enough, Pest Control – Lyon and Turnbull is blithely going ahead, claiming they have all been authenticated by another body called Vermin.
This is brave. According to the Daily Telegraph, all of the major auction houses refuse to touch any Banksy works that don't have the Pest Control stamp of approval and earlier this year several such disputed works had to be withdrawn from a Bloomsbury auction.