An auction in London sold a collection of 18 Banksy artworks on Thursday, some reaching over £400,000.
Sales included one of the most iconic Banksy artworks “girl and balloon”, which has been stencilled onto the back of an IKEA frame.

The “barcode leopard”, which has never been sold at auction before went for a huge £75,650.
The most important piece of artwork was a very early canvas of Banksy’s famously misspelt work “Heavy Weaponry”. From 1998, the canvas is extremely rare as unlike the later reproductions this one is in colour and therefore sold for a reasonable £38,400.

All of the designs that were sold at auction this week are available here at banksytshirts.org on t-shirts, hoodies and mugs – and at much more reasonable prices than £30,000!

Camden town a place favoured by Banksy for much of his street art may have a new addition to its collection. This artwork which depicts a little girl with a lollipop dragging along a cart that contains a surface to air missile was found on the corner of an office building down oval street.

Although the artwork has not yet been officially said have been produced by Banksy it does carry many of the characteristics that his other famous pieces of work have, like the obvious political undertones and the fact that it is stencilled like most of Banksy’s other works.

Whether it’s a Banksy or not we still like it enough to add it to our T-Shirt collection here and it is available in many different colours and sizes so it’s easy for you to find the right look.

Various works are on display at the London Opera gallery by Mr Brainwash aka Thierry Guetta. Mr Brainwash gained much needed notoriety and momentum for his work during the inception and release of Exit through the gift shop in 2010. Portrayed as a self-confessed journalist at the time, his interested soon lead him down the path of creating and publishing his own work. Some have argued that Mr Brainwash has acquired unearned notoriety and fame, Banksy’s himself stating that Mr Brainwash’s popularity did not grow organically but more so for marketing, and commercial effects put in place to encourage more prominence for his work, with the use of the elaborate and expensive exhibitions.

Although there have been various spouts of instances whereby Banksy and Mr Brainwash have words, some of the works created by Mr Brainwash do bare some similar resemblance if not in content but the theme in which they have been created around.

Some of his work on display includes “The Beatles” a piece pictured above which is largely produced out of smashed vinyl records. Conversely Banksy himself has also created a design surrounding the theme of the Beatles with a piece called “Never liked the Beatles”.

The exhibition is running from the 6^th of October to the 31^st of October.

Banksy: Detonator Monkey

More of Banksy’s work is set to go on sale this week with an auctioning off of several of Banksy’s iconic designs. Included in the lot is Banksy’s Detonator Monkey design, originally created in 2000. Additionally Precision Bombing, Balloon Girl are just a few designs amongst a batch which are flagged to be sold at Bonham’s Auction in New Bond Street London. The auction has already attracted lot of pre-sales, with an estimation of £70,000 to £90,000 for just the Detonator Monkey design alone.

If any of Banksy’s previous auctions are anything to go by there is no doubt it will be a resounding success. In 2007 an auction at Bonham’s expected to sell 10 pieces by Banksy with the expectation of rising a maximum of £300,000, this expectation was beaten with the auction yielding a total of £546,000. In 2010 Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Day Auction sold three of Banksy’s pieces one of which was a Kate Moss print, an edition of just 50. Pre-sale estimates came in the region of £25,000 to £35,000, it eventually sold for £46,000, a bargain considering Kate Moss prints have sold upwards of £100,000 at previous auctions. The same pre-sale estimates were also given to Bomber hugger which eventually sold for £49,250.

We stock most of these designs on sale at our store, at more affordable prices than you’ll find at any of the Banksy auctions

There have been many notorious instances whereby pieces of Banky’s artwork have been inadvertently destroyed, covered up or removed. Banksy created the infamous Every Picture Tells A Lie piece in 2003 at the Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien in 2003.  During subsequent events the painting eventually was painted over a number of times, completely obscuring the original work.

Photo by: Michael Sohn/AP

The piece was eventually resurrected as part of a project lead by Brad Downey. Downey’s exhibition is titled “What Lies Beneath” and focuses on layers of paint. Downey was part of the original exhibition in which the work was created back in 2003; this is one of Downey’s main motions to restore the piece back to its original glory.

The result of the excavation is quite impressive; a lot of the original piece has been recovered including the colour and outline of the characters.

However some of Banksy’s previous work has not been so fortunate. In July the Banksy’s “Gorilla in Pink Mask” located on a wall in Bristol was painted over when the new owner white washed the work as he wasn’t aware of Banksy at the time. It since has been partially restored, but a lot of the colour and vividness of the work has been lost.

We stock both Gorilla in Pink Mask, and Every Picture Tells A Lie, t-shirts available in a large range of sizes and colours, guaranteed not to be removed Additionally we also have these t – shirt available in ladies Gorilla in Pink Mask, Every Picture Tells A Lie.

Banksy has recently made the headlines expressing his anger and outrage of a recent airing of a television programme ‘Graffiti Wars’. Graffiti Wars shown on Channel 4 showcases a series of bitter rivalries which started at street level between graffiti writers, street artists and the authorities.

The documentary has a lot of focus on the rivalries between Robbo and Banksy, recalling aspects from their previous encounters which highlight past tensions.

There have been many instances where work from Banksy has been ‘defaced’ by Robbo. Some of the most publicized examples are shown below:

(Banksy’s classic go back to bed rat, repainted by Robbo)

(Banksys wallpaper design, altered to show ‘King Robbo’)

Another one of Banksy artworks has been accidently removed by The highways agency this time.

The artwork was shown being made on the M32 just outside Bristol in the Banksy film exit through the gift shop which premiered on ch4 on Saturday.

The sign which read “Welcome to the west country please don’t laugh at our accent” was placed onto the blank side of a sign that is used to inform traffic of a diversion route.

The Highways Agency spokeswomen stated “Don’t take the Mick out of our accent is not one of our key messages”, and that she was “sure they didn’t realise” that the sign was a Banksy, when it was taken down 3 months ago.

She also added that the artwork was torn in the removal procedure due to the way the sign was posted on.

This is of course not the first time a original Banksy has been accidently removed. A couple of weeks ago I did a post on the masked gorilla that was painted over in Bristol and have subsequently attempted to salvage the iconic painting.

Unfortunately as a street graffiti artist it’s an occupational hazard to have your work painted over and destroyed.

We now have this design for sale right here for only £11.99