A street artist has called out Channel 4 and an art collector after a work he painted in Liverpool was sold in a TV auction for £250,000 with the claim it could be a Banksy.
The Liverpool street artist Silent Bill said he sprayed a rat image with the words ‘I never liked this Banksy’ underneath a real Banksy - only for art experts to remove it from the wall as if it was actually by the Bristolian artist as well.
That happened around ten years ago, but last month, the artwork found its way onto a Channel 4 television show called The Greatest Auction. It was sold as a Banksy and bought for £250,000 but now the artist who said they painted it said the sale and the amount of money spent is ‘appalling’.
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Banksy originally painted a work called ‘The Love Plane’ on the side of a house in Liverpool way back in 2004. Silent Bill, an anonymous street artist in Liverpool, said that in 2013, he painted one of the rats with a placard images that Banksy is so famous for, underneath the Love Plane with the words ‘I never liked this Banksy’, as a jokey homage to the Bristol street artist and as a reference to a version that Banksy did do in Liverpool which had the rat holding a sign saying ‘I never like The Beatles’.
In 2016, the Love Plane was removed from the wall for its own protection after being defaced, and Silent Bill’s little rat beneath it was removed too, and then separated to become its own art work.
Somehow, it appeared on The Greatest Auction back in May, brought in by a sales representative known only as ‘Justin’, who said he believed it was a Banksy, but could not prove it.
As the Liverpool Echo reported, there was much debate about whether the piece was a Banksy or not, but the auction went ahead and a man who collects Banksy artworks paid £250,000 for it.
Silent Bill has called out the auction and its inclusion in the Channel 4 programme. “It’s well known within the lower echelons of the street art scene that the Never liked this Banksy piece was my homage to Banksy, in reference to his Never liked the Beatles piece,” he said.
“Whilst I’m thinking ‘A fool and their money’, I’m also thinking the sale highlights the UK’s current inequality and austerity when paint on a wall has just sold for the cost that would house two homeless families.
“I think the seller should donate the money to worthwhile charities and the buyer should re-evaluate their art portfolio. PS I have a nice Warhol I did for sale,” he added.
A spokesperson for Channel 4 defended its inclusion in the programme. “The provenance of the artwork was investigated, as is due process for auctions. The programme-makers made clear to the featured bidders and viewers the challenges of definitively authenticating an artwork of this kind, and heard from expert opinion on the matter,” he added.
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