Panel to authenticate Banksy's street art
Works by Bristol-born artist Banksy are to go up for sale accompanied by a certificate of authenticity for the first time.
Five pieces of street art will be auctioned by Lyon & Turnbull in London on September 27.
A board has been set up to provide an independent authentication service dedicated to such early works.
The move follows concern that there are an increasing number of Banksy imitators.
Suspected fake Banksies in Bristol include a work which appeared on the side of the Honeypot building in Upper Maudlin Street in May.
It showed a child, complete with paper bag ready to bang, sneaking up on a police firearms officer. It was not signed with the iconic Banksy tag.
And in April last year a stencilled cut out box appeared on a wall and pavement near The Triangle in Clifton. Again there was no tag.
Banksy's images usually make a political point in a humorous way.
Ben Hanly, head of modern and contemporary art at Lyon & Turnbull, said the new authentication board – known as Vermin – would address a grey area in the market.
A committee called Pest Control was set up within the past few months to authenticate Banksy's prints and canvasses after fakes began to appear on the market.
But the body, endorsed by Banksy himself, deliberately avoids handling his "street pieces" created without permission early in his career.
Neither Banksy nor anybody directly associated with him is free to authenticate these works without the risk of opening him up to prosecution for vandalism.
But now, if authentication can be proved by documenting the work's proven history, it will be given a Vermin certificate. All works and their provenance would then be available for public examination and published on the internet.
The five Banksy street pieces have been valued at between £25,000 and £150,000.
Ben Hanly said buyers wanted authentication to be "rock solid". "The market is relatively small for street pieces as not many have survived, even though they are by far the most important," he said.
"They're where his style and career came from."
Banksy's distinctive spray-can art can be found all over the streets of Bristol, London and Brighton.
His works have sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds and he has a number of celebrity fans including Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
The artist has zealously guarded his anonymity.
The five works being auctioned are:
Gangsta Rat, painted on plywood in Liverpool as part of the 2004 Biennial Festival of Contemporary Art. It could fetch up to £35,000.
Refuse Rat, painted on metal and is valued at £20,000 to £30,000.
Drill Rat dates from 2003 or 2004 and was salvaged from a demolition site in Brighton. Expected to raise between £25,000 and £35,000.
Photographer Rat, stencil and spray-painted on plastic road bollard in 2003. Valued at between £30,000 and £40,000.
Fungle Junk spray painted on three steel panels which originally formed part of a larger mural painted by Banksy on the side of a trailer at the Lizard Festival in Cornwall in 1999.
The artist sought permission from the owner of the trailer to paint the mural which was created as a piece of performance art in front of festival goers. Valued at between £100,000 and £150,000.
11 Comments
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by matt, bristol
Sunday, September 14 2008, 9:52PM
“shame on the Evening post for sucking up to the lies created around this 'Vermin' group - thieves and chancers .. they have no right to offer certificates for Banksys work - they have no right to remove these pieces from the street - there provenance is good for nothing but wiping my proverbial with .
Did they pay you to write this article and paint them as a reputable organisation ?”
by Alex, Bristol
Monday, September 08 2008, 11:19AM
“Thanks Hugo,
We discussed the Urban Arts weekend at the amphitheatre, did you go and see it in the end?
You thought that street art isn't art. Were you enlightened.”
by Hugo Fat, Bristol
Sunday, September 07 2008, 1:54PM
“Alex - look for the term 'pestcontroloffice'”
by Hugo, Bristol
Sunday, September 07 2008, 1:49PM
“BEP - is there any way to tone down your censorship machine? I have been trying to post a response to Alex giving him the URL of the organisation and BEP won't publish it. What is the deal with you not allowing URLs to be posted? As the censorship happens instantly I know it's a machine, not a human doing it. So why come up with such silly rules? BEP could have provided that info as part of the article, and as you did not I was merely trying to add the info. You made me us all register for this comments service so you could verify who we all are, so what's the need for automatic censorship of URLs?”
by Hugo Fat, Bristol
Sunday, September 07 2008, 1:38PM
“Alex - http://www.pestcontroloffice.com/
You should consider getting yourself an original Hugo Fat - each piece has a thumbprint and DNA embedded so when I am dead and gone there will be no doubt.”
by Anorak, bristol
Saturday, September 06 2008, 8:02AM
“Alex, you don't seem to get it. Vermin have nothing to do with Banksy. If you own a genuine screenprint it was produced by POW - http://www.picturesonwalls.com/ - their website has an 'authentication' page. Pest Control is the only place that can authenticate 'original' works by Banksy - http://pestcontroloffice.com/ - Pest Control is official, Vermin are chancers trying to confuse people into thinking they have a right to decide what Banksy piece is genuine and seem to have overlooked that the artist has already established a body to do this.”
by Alex, Bristol
Friday, September 05 2008, 11:15PM
“I have a Banksy stencil print, which I know is a genuine article as it was bought from an official Banksy collection exhibition in London. A Rat holding up a placard with "Get out while you can".
I'd love to get this authenticated by Vermin, but does anyone know how to get in touch with them? I have had a look on google, but could only find a messageboard. Any idea how much this is worth today?”
by Mark, Stoke Bishop
Friday, September 05 2008, 4:28PM
“The board should come and take a look around my way. I think there might still be a genuine '9/11 = Lies' - or might they be imitations? Why all the media interest in serial vandalisers of other people's property? Banksy might be talented in some eyes but where do you draw the line when his emulators turn out to be not so good? Vermin, the lot of them.”
by John Berry, Bristol
Friday, September 05 2008, 3:34PM
“How strange ??.Other Graffiti "Artists" seem to be arrested and fined ! !.”
by josefC, London
Friday, September 05 2008, 1:08PM
“The term ¿independent authentication¿ does not make sense. How can a group of people with no connection to an artist take it upon themselves to decide whether or not a particular work of art is genuine or not? Only Banksy and his agents can authenticate his work. What surprises me most is that Lyon & Turnbull have formed an alliance with such a suspect outfit. Their reputation will surely be damaged, and as a collector myself, I certainly would never consider buying through them again.”