Latest news with #Valentine'sDayMascara
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Waking up with a Banksy on your wall: The differing fortunes of two homeowners
Sam was lying in bed one morning when her tenant in a house she owned in Margate sent her a photo of a piece of graffiti that had appeared on the wall outside. Astonishingly, it looked like a Banksy. It would turn out to be perhaps the graffiti artist's most interesting new artwork of recent years, Valentine's Day Mascara (pictured above), which was revealed in Margate on Valentine's Day, 2023. Bamboozled, Sam googled: what do you do when you wake up with a Banksy on your wall? "What did Google say about that?" I asked her. "Nothing! And I was like, I need to contact the council, I need to find an art gallery who can advise me." Sam called Julian Usher at Red Eight Gallery. Julian's team, conscious that new Banksy's are under immediate threat from street cleaners, the weather, rival graffiti artists and other art dealers, promised he'd be in Margate within the hour: "We knew we had to get the piece covered," say Julian. And there was another reason Julian got to Margate double-quick: if Banksy chooses your wall for one of his drawings, you could be seriously in the money. For the second season of my BBC Radio 4 podcast The Banksy Story, which is called When Banksy Comes To Town, I've been following the very different fates of two sets of homeowners who wake up one day to find a Banksy on their wall. The season shows just how important his graffiti becomes for a local community – and why people disagree so vehemently about what should happen after it's discovered. Sam became the custodian of Valentine's Day Mascara, which speaks to the theme of domestic violence, incidents of which usually spike each Valentine's Day. It's a complicated bit of work. A peppy 50s housewife with a black eye has bludgeoned her partner. A real pan with flecks of red is at her feet, and his painted legs are upended into the real fridge-freezer that Banksy left by the wall. A broken plastic chair testifies to the fight they have had. Later on the day it appeared, refuse collectors arrived to spirit away the fridge-freezer. This precipitated a free-for-all, with the public helping themselves to the remnants. It was mayhem. A media scrum, a wrong-footed local council, millions of global onlookers. Exactly, one suspects, what Banksy wanted. And this time, just for laughs, he left behind oil painter Peter Brown, commissioned to capture the scenes he would miss. I spoke to Pete "The Street" Brown for my series. "The whole reason I was employed was because Banksy was questioning what was the art about," Pete explained. "Is it about the graffiti? Or is it about the reaction afterwards, and what happens to it?" As luck would have it, Pete was captured on video just as Banksy's team were putting the finishing touches to Valentine's Day Mascara – a video that The Banksy Story managed to obtain. In it we can see that one of Banksy's team let a local kid play with their drone. "They're in the process of putting a large piece on a wall and yet they're taking the time to teach a kid how to fly a drone," says Steph Warren, who used to work with Banksy and who appeared in my first series - about the artist's rise and rise. "Very sweet!" Alongside Sam, I've been following the story of Gert and Gary. They, like Sam, did not want me to use their last name. A 30ft-high seagull appeared one morning on the wall of their buy-to-let in Lowestoft in Suffolk. The bird needed to be massive for Banksy's ambitious visual gag to work. The artist had shoved large yellow insulation strips into a skip that now looked like a fast-food container that the seagull divebombed to steal chips. Banksy had chosen his wall well. Visitors arriving by train were treated to this witty meditation on the scourge of Britain's seaside towns, equal parts warning and celebration. The Lowestoft Seagull was part of Banksy's Great British Staycation, his post-Covid lockdown campaign to cheer us all up at the prospect of a summer holiday spent in the UK. But Gert was not cheered-up at all. "It's not a seagull, it's an albatross!" she quipped when I went to interview her. "How did you know it was a Banksy?" I asked. "There was scaffolding erected on the side of the house. I tried to find out if it was a particular scaffolding firm, but there was no phone number," Gert replied. "On the Monday morning the letting agency informed me that I could possibly have a Banksy. By then the scaffolding had gone and this seagull appeared." This fits with what we know of Banksy's modus operandi. He claims hiding in plain sight is the best way to remain invisible. "If questioned about your legitimacy," he wrote in his book Wall & Piece, "simply complain about the hourly rate." What do we know about Banksy? Nine days of Banksy, but what do the works mean? It's a good gag. But how fun is it for the folk on the other end of his spray can? I found that with good hustling skills a Banksied homeowner might see their bank balance expanded, but it's not an easy process. As Gert explains, exasperated, "Lowestoft people commented that it belongs to Lowestoft… But nobody's turned up to say, 'we'll help you protect it'. It doesn't belong to the person filming it, or the person taking pictures with their children. The problem is mine!" Gert had to contend with people putting their children into the skip for photo opportunities, the council trying to charge her for Perspex screens, and the threat of a Preservation Order which might have cost her £40,000 a year. And the two stories I've been following have ended up having entirely different outcomes. Both artworks have been taken off the houses they were painted on – a complex, expensive operation that uses specialist equipment – so they can be sold. But while the Banksy in Margate is now on the verge of selling for well over £1m, with a sizeable chunk set to go to a domestic violence charity, and with the piece remaining in the town for the foreseeable future, the Banksy up the coast in Lowestoft languishes in a climate-controlled warehouse, costing its owners £3,000 per month. It has cost Gert and her partner Gary around £450,000 so far to preserve the piece and although there are buyers sniffing around, nobody has bought it yet. Speaking about the situation, Gary told me: "I'm so angry at what's going on." Not everyone approves of people trying to sell Banksy's street art. Steph Warren – who starred in the first series of The Banksy Story as the only person ever to work for Banksy without signing his non-disclosure agreement – suggests that worried homeowners should simply "get busy with five litres of white emulsion and paint it out". Owner of street-art gallery Stelladore in St Leonards, Warren is a purist, who feels that art made for the street should remain there, no matter it's value. "With Banksy, where he puts the art is fundamental," she says. "Remove the work from the precise place on the streets that he put it, and the work instantly loses its power. Context is everything." But Banksy has elevated graffiti into a new art form, now monetised – street art. Banksy's signed prints can sell for six-figure sums. Graffiti, or street art, has not just come of age, it is now an asset class. Given this, how can any homeowner feel okay about scrubbing away a Banksy without feeling as if they have smashed a Ming vase? One thing I know for sure: if you wake up with a Banksy on your wall, you'll have to make a series of clever decisions to come out of it unscathed. As Sam says, after two years of dealing with the Banksy circus, "going back to normal life now is going to be terribly boring". The new season of The Banksy Story is available on BBC Sounds Home of Banksy's early graffiti is sold for £650,000 Two in court charged with stealing £95,000 Banksy print Banksy piranhas to find new home in London Museum
BBC News
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
What to do if you wake up with a Banksy on your wall
Sam was lying in bed one morning when her tenant in a house she owned in Margate sent her a photo of a piece of graffiti that had appeared on the wall it looked like a Banksy. It would turn out to be perhaps the graffiti artist's most interesting new artwork of recent years, Valentine's Day Mascara (pictured above), which was revealed in Margate on Valentine's Day, Sam googled: what do you do when you wake up with a Banksy on your wall?"What did Google say about that?" I asked her."Nothing! And I was like, I need to contact the council, I need to find an art gallery who can advise me."Sam called Julian Usher at Red Eight Gallery. Julian's team, conscious that new Banksy's are under immediate threat from street cleaners, the weather, rival graffiti artists and other art dealers, promised he'd be in Margate within the hour: "We knew we had to get the piece covered," say there was another reason Julian got to Margate double-quick: if Banksy chooses your wall for one of his drawings, you could be seriously in the the second season of my BBC Radio 4 podcast The Banksy Story, which is called When Banksy Comes To Town, I've been following the very different fates of two sets of homeowners who wake up one day to find a Banksy on their wall. The season shows just how important his graffiti becomes for a local community – and why people disagree so vehemently about what should happen after it's discovered. Sam became the custodian of Valentine's Day Mascara, which speaks to the theme of domestic violence, incidents of which usually spike each Valentine's Day. It's a complicated bit of work. A peppy 50s housewife with a black eye has bludgeoned her partner. A real pan with flecks of red is at her feet, and his painted legs are upended into the real fridge-freezer that Banksy left by the wall. A broken plastic chair testifies to the fight they have on the day it appeared, refuse collectors arrived to spirit away the fridge-freezer. This precipitated a free-for-all, with the public helping themselves to the remnants. It was mayhem. A media scrum, a wrong-footed local council, millions of global onlookers. Exactly, one suspects, what Banksy wanted. And this time, just for laughs, he left behind oil painter Peter Brown, commissioned to capture the scenes he would miss. I spoke to Pete "The Street" Brown for my series. "The whole reason I was employed was because Banksy was questioning what was the art about," Pete explained. "Is it about the graffiti? Or is it about the reaction afterwards, and what happens to it?"As luck would have it, Pete was captured on video just as Banksy's team were putting the finishing touches to Valentine's Day Mascara – a video that The Banksy Story managed to obtain. In it we can see that one of Banksy's team let a local kid play with their drone. "They're in the process of putting a large piece on a wall and yet they're taking the time to teach a kid how to fly a drone," says Steph Warren, who used to work with Banksy and who appeared in my first series - about the artist's rise and rise. "Very sweet!"Alongside Sam, I've been following the story of Gert and Gary. They, like Sam, did not want me to use their last name. A 30ft-high seagull appeared one morning on the wall of their buy-to-let in Lowestoft in Suffolk. The bird needed to be massive for Banksy's ambitious visual gag to work. The artist had shoved large yellow insulation strips into a skip that now looked like a fast-food container that the seagull divebombed to steal chips. Banksy had chosen his wall well. Visitors arriving by train were treated to this witty meditation on the scourge of Britain's seaside towns, equal parts warning and celebration. The Lowestoft Seagull was part of Banksy's Great British Staycation, his post-Covid lockdown campaign to cheer us all up at the prospect of a summer holiday spent in the Gert was not cheered-up at all. "It's not a seagull, it's an albatross!" she quipped when I went to interview her."How did you know it was a Banksy?" I asked."There was scaffolding erected on the side of the house. I tried to find out if it was a particular scaffolding firm, but there was no phone number," Gert replied. "On the Monday morning the letting agency informed me that I could possibly have a Banksy. By then the scaffolding had gone and this seagull appeared."This fits with what we know of Banksy's modus operandi. He claims hiding in plain sight is the best way to remain invisible. "If questioned about your legitimacy," he wrote in his book Wall & Piece, "simply complain about the hourly rate." It's a good gag. But how fun is it for the folk on the other end of his spray can?I found that with good hustling skills a Banksied homeowner might see their bank balance expanded, but it's not an easy process. As Gert explains, exasperated, "Lowestoft people commented that it belongs to Lowestoft… But nobody's turned up to say, 'we'll help you protect it'. It doesn't belong to the person filming it, or the person taking pictures with their children. The problem is mine!" Gert had to contend with people putting their children into the skip for photo opportunities, the council trying to charge her for Perspex screens, and the threat of a Preservation Order which might have cost her £40,000 a year. And the two stories I've been following have ended up having entirely different outcomes. Both artworks have been taken off the houses they were painted on – a complex, expensive operation that uses specialist equipment – so they can be sold. But while the Banksy in Margate is now on the verge of selling for well over £1m, with a sizeable chunk set to go to a domestic violence charity, and with the piece remaining in the town for the foreseeable future, the Banksy up the coast in Lowestoft languishes in a climate-controlled warehouse, costing its owners £3,000 per month. It has cost Gert and her partner Gary around £450,000 so far to preserve the piece and although there are buyers sniffing around, nobody has bought it yet. Speaking about the situation, Gary told me: "I'm so angry at what's going on."Not everyone approves of people trying to sell Banksy's street art. Steph Warren – who starred in the first series of The Banksy Story as the only person ever to work for Banksy without signing his non-disclosure agreement – suggests that worried homeowners should simply "get busy with five litres of white emulsion and paint it out". Owner of street-art gallery Stelladore in St Leonards, Warren is a purist, who feels that art made for the street should remain there, no matter it's value. "With Banksy, where he puts the art is fundamental," she says. "Remove the work from the precise place on the streets that he put it, and the work instantly loses its power. Context is everything."But Banksy has elevated graffiti into a new art form, now monetised – street art. Banksy's signed prints can sell for six-figure sums. Graffiti, or street art, has not just come of age, it is now an asset class. Given this, how can any homeowner feel okay about scrubbing away a Banksy without feeling as if they have smashed a Ming vase?One thing I know for sure: if you wake up with a Banksy on your wall, you'll have to make a series of clever decisions to come out of it unscathed. As Sam says, after two years of dealing with the Banksy circus, "going back to normal life now is going to be terribly boring".The new season of The Banksy Story is available on BBC Sounds
BBC News
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
New series of Radio 4's The Banksy Story hears first-hand accounts from residents who have woken up to a surprise installation on their property
Roll-up! Roll-up! The Banksy circus is coming to town... For series two of BBC Radio 4's The Banksy Story, super-fan James Peak returns to investigate what actually happens when a Banksy original appears on the wall of your house. Across the five-part series, James uncovers the personal stories behind two sets of people who woke up to find a Banksy spray-painted on their walls – and have totally different experiences as a result. One was a mural of a seagull stealing giant chips from a skip that emerged in Lowestoft as part of Banksy's Great British Staycation collection; the other, Valentine's Day Mascara - which appeared in Margate in 2023 - and included a frying pan and a chest freezer as well as a striking stencilled piece, all apparently in aid of highlighting the problem of domestic violence. A Banksy can fetch millions at auction, but does owning one of his pieces on a wall that belongs to you actually make you the lottery winner you might expect? When Banksy Comes to Town looks at the madness that can unfold, and the unexpected consequences for residents, fans, local councils, the art world and beyond. From financial pressures to the ethical dilemmas of preserving street art, the series shows how the people who have found themselves at the centre of a cultural phenomenon attract a huge amount of (not always welcome) attention, by hearing direct from them. Presenter James Peak says 'The aftermath of a Banksy incident is always dramatic, unpredictable and perhaps a bit bonkers in how local people, the media and the art world all react. For this series, we thought there would be some interesting stories that came from talking to the people who have been on the receiving end of an unexpected Banksy art gift, but the big surprise making these shows was finding out just what it means for the local community when Banksy comes to town, and how deep Banksy's rabbit holes go! We're thrilled to be joined once again by Steph Warren, who lends us her 25 years of experience in the underground world of street art, and gives us some more surprising insights into Banksy's secret world." Commissioning Editor Daniel Clarke says "In the first smash hit series, we gave a glimpse behind the scenes of Banksy's rise to fame – we're now turning our attention to the frenzy which can take over an entire community when Banksy comes to town. There's so much mystery surrounding what happens when a Banksy appears, and it's totally fascinating to hear first-hand from the people who have experienced being at the centre of the storm.' Written, Produced & Presented by James Peak Voices: Keith Wickham & Harriet Carmichael Music: Alcatraz Swim Team & Lilium Street Art Consultancy and Investigative Support: Steph Warren Executive Producer: Philip Abrams Commissioner: Daniel Clarke The Banksy Story is an Essential Radio production for BBC Radio 4. Listen to When Banksy Comes to Town on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds from Monday 7th April Listen to series one of The Banksy Story on BBC Sounds RB2
