£18.5m Auction record for shredded picture ... now that’s a big hole in your Banksy account!

Drama over artwork worth £1m before being slashed into pieces

THE half-shredded Banksy artwork Love Is In The Bin sold last night at a dramatic auction for a record £18.5million – nearly 18 times its original price.

Three years ago in the same auction room the canvas, then called Girl With Balloon, was intact as the hammer came down at £1.1million.

Seconds later, the piece started to descend in its ornate frame and – drawing gasps at Sotheby’s in London – reappeared in tatters out the bottom.

The mysterious street artist had concealed a shredder in the frame for the prank that caused a global sensation, and he promptly renamed the piece Love Is In The Bin.

Yesterday auctioneer Oliver Barker, who had also presided over the first sale in October 2018, wondered if another stunt may be on the cards.

Towards the end of the bidding, he joked: ‘I can’t tell you how terrified I am to bring down his hammer.’ Afterwards, he said: ‘And it’s still there, I can’t believe it.’

But even though there were no pranks, the auction for ‘the ultimate Banksy artwork’ was still a dramatic affair with a tense bidding war coming down to two parties competing via telephone.

Bids opened at £2.5million and rose within minutes to £10million. As the price soared to £15million, interested parties peeled away, leaving Emma Baker and Nick Buckley Wood from Sotheby’s to battle it out on the phones, shooting sharp glances at one another as they spoke to their bidders.

At £16million, Miss Baker, representing a private bidder, gestured she was backing out, leaving the artwork to be sold to an investor represented by Mr Buckley Wood.

Including a buyer’s premium, the unknown purchaser paid £18,582,000.

The image, which first appeared stencilled on London’s Waterloo Bridge in 2002, sold vastly over the £4million to £6million guide price.

After the shredding, Banksy posted a video on Instagram showing how he orchestrated the spectacle. The clip is captioned, ‘The urge to destroy is also a creative urge’ – a quote from 19th century anarchist Mikhail Bakunin which Banksy attributed to Pablo Picasso.

The seller of the artwork, who placed the £1.1million winning bid on Girl With Balloon, described the shredding of the painting as ‘surreal’. He added that he became the ‘accidental – but very privileged – owner of Love Is In The Bin’. Last night it remained in its semi-shredded state.

Banksy, who has never confirmed his full identity, began his career spray-painting buildings in Bristol and has since become one of the world’s best-known artists.

The previous record for his work was set in March, when Game Changer, a hand-painted image of a young boy playing with superhero dolls, made £16.7million at a Christie’s auction. While Batman and Spider-Man are discarded in a bin, the child clutches a figure of a masked nurse wearing a cape.

Bansky gave the work in May last year to University Hospital Southampton as a thank you to NHS staff during the first wave of the pandemic. He said he would donate the £16.7million to health causes.