Urban Art Association

All the way to the Banksy, by Daniel Silk on Jun 22, 2008 23:47:28 GMT 1, arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2286879,00.html

All the way to the Banksy

A piece of art made by Banksy for the Observer Music Monthly could fetch a tidy sum this week. Editor Caspar Llewellyn Smith recalls how it came to be

Sunday June 22, 2008
The Observer

It's not every day that an idle thought ends up netting someone else £50,000 or possibly more. But then it's not every day that you have the good luck to commission Banksy to create a piece of art for you.
Five years ago, with the launch of a new Observer magazine imminent, the Observer Music Monthly, and with Blur lined up as our first cover stars, it seemed like a good idea to ask whether the guerrilla artist would help create something special for it (he had previously produced the artwork for their album Think Tank). Even then, Banksy was a shadowy figure, but a route was found to him, and so it was that one summer morning a minibus set off from London with two art directors, a photographer, me, Blur's PR and the artist.

The band were playing the Leeds Festival that evening, but when we reached the site, there wasn't the good sized wall we needed - so off we drove again. Within a couple of miles, we found a farm and an amazingly tolerant farmer and his wife, Steve and Jill Walmesley. Banksy got to work there on the side of a duck shed; the band drove over; Claudia, the photographer, shot them underneath a TV apparently being thrown out a window. The farmer's daughter, Lucy, and some of her friends turned up and had their photo taken with the group. Everyone seemed happy, and I always wondered what happened to that wall. That was until the catalogue arrived for a sale of modern and contemporary art taking place at Bloomsbury Auctions on Thursday.
'Lot 90: Banksy (b.1975) UNTITLED, 2003, spraypaint with stencil on concrete blocks, approx.

96 x 72in.' Kindly, our role in the piece's creation is also credited.

The asking price? '£30,000-£50,000.'

'Yes, it is a lot, and no, we'd never heard of Banksy before,' said Mr Walmesley on Friday after driving down to London with a trailer carrying the concrete blocks in a reinforced steel frame. 'Will I miss it now? If you want me to say yes, yes.'

It turns out that Banksy had also tested his aerosol cans on a steel barn door. 'But then the barn was renovated and Steve was going to chuck the door in a skip,' remembers Lucy's boyfriend, David Smith.

'I rescued it because I liked the image - a girl with a television set - stuck it in our Fiesta, took it home and there it sat in our living room.' David, too, remained blissfully unaware of Banky's significance until a friend suggested he have the piece valued. He sold it for £32,000 at Bonhams last year. 'Cleared our debts,' he says.

Can we have a cut of the money? 'Too late.' Banksy might have liked his share, too, I suggest. But then the shadowy artist couldn't be reached for comment.