Art fans were furious when a council removed part of Banksy’s latest work.
Valentine’s Day Mascara incorporated a fly-tipped freezer – a mural behind it showed a battered woman one side and her husband’s legs sticking out of the other.
Following speculation from locals in Margate, Kent, Banksy's official Instagram page made a post confirming that the internationally renowned artist was behind the piece.
Immediately, it proved to be a rather controversial addition to the Thanet area, with some residents delighted to see the new mural, while others called for its removal.
Kent’s Thanet Council first removed then returned the freezer – though a gallery has now taken it, planning to relocate the whole piece. But it wasn’t the first time the guerilla artist’s work has been interfered with...
Flag of Europe in Dover, Kent
One of Banksy’s largest UK murals appeared on the side of a derelict building in Dover in May 2017, the year after the Brexit referendum. Showing a metalworker chipping one of the yellow EU stars off the blue flag, the piece was whitewashed in September 2019, baffling the artist, who had planned to respray it on 30 October 2019 - the original ‘Brexit day’ - to show a crumpled European Union flag on the ground.
“Oh… seems they’ve painted over it,” he wrote on Instagram. “Nevermind. I guess a big white flag says it just as well.”
The artist had previously produced a graphic at the Calais Jungle refugee camp across the Channel, showing the late Apple founder Steve Jobs as a migrant.
“We’re often led to believe migration is a drain on the country’s resources but Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant,” said Banksy in a rare statement. “
Apple is the world’s most profitable company, it pays over $7bn a year in taxes - and it only exists because they allowed in a young man from Homs.”
Livin’ The Dream billboard in Sunset Boulevard, LA
Featuring a strung-out Mickey Mouse brandishing a martini while groping a model’s bra, and Minnie Mouse holding drugs paraphernalia with pinprick eyes and a dirty polka-dot dress, the billboard was taken down just days after the guerilla artist struck.
A YouTuber who filmed the banner being torn down and crumpled up by workers commented: “Someone, somewhere is gonna make a looooot of money off that piece of ‘trash’ as they called it. I feel privileged to have had a Banksy mural outside my window for 2 days.”
Livin’ The Dream had been one of four Los Angeles works Banksy had painted during his February 2011 spree, designed to coincide with his Oscar nomination for documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop (he didn’t win).
The work of art was rumoured to be worth six figures, but scuffling broke out between the Las Vegas entertainment company The Light Group - which had paid for the advertisement Banksy defaced - and CBS Outdoor, which owned the actual billboard, over who should own the tattered piece.
The entertainment group won and announced plans to hang the piece along the famous Vegas strip.
Mobile Lovers in Bristol
A man and a woman embrace in a shadowy doorway, their faces aglow.
But this mural with a twist shows the lovers staring entranced at their phones, paying no heed to each other.
The stencil popped up in April 2014, breadcrumbed on Banksy’s own website with no clues as to its location, sending fans into a frenzy. It was found 24 hours later on a wall owned by Broad Plain Boys’ Club, a 120-year-old youth project that was struggling for funds and at risk of closing.
Months later, the club opted to sell the piece to cover its expenses and Banksy wrote to confirm it was entitled to do whatever it wanted to the work. Mobile Lovers was sold to a private collector for £403,000 and every penny went to the club - one of Banksy’s many acts of philanthropy.
Parachuting Rat in Melbourne, Australia
Blundering builders accidentally destroyed one of Banksy’s three Parachuting Rat murals in Melbourne while installing new plumbing in May 2012.
The street art, which had been stencilled on a building wall by the anonymous artist 15 years previously, was worth tens of thousands of pounds and loved by the local community.
Business owner Tina McKenzie couldn’t believe the builders had knocked through the wall without consulting anyone, saying: “They have unconsciously taken a part of Melbourne, taken a part of history which is really important to do with street art, and just destroyed it without even thinking about it.
"They wouldn’t even know that that’s a $50,000 piece of art they’ve just sawed through, possibly even more.”
Banksy, she said, would “probably laugh” at the mishap.
The second Parachuting Rat was painted over by unaware council workers in 2010, but the last, priceless stencilling, remains intact in Melbourne’s Duckboard Place.
Season’s Greetings in Port Talbot
A little boy with his arms spread wide gazed at the sky, sticking out his tongue as a flurry of snowflakes fell around him.
But round the corner from the mural was a second part to Banksy’s first and only Welsh work - a raging skip fire throwing out polluted ash not snow, highlighting Port Talbot’s industrial past and a comment on the wonder of childhood innocence.
Banksy’s stencil appeared on the side of a steelworker’s garage overnight in December 2018, a Christmas present for owner Ian Lewis, who was quickly inundated with excited tourists. The piece was sold for an undisclosed six-figures to art dealer John Brandler, who after three years craned it out of Wales and over to a storage unit in England, disappointing locals who had adopted it as part of the community.
“I wanted it to stay here but spent months banging my head against a brick wall,” said Brandler, who had offered to loan it to the town council for £100,000 a year - which it turned down.
“This is not a rich place,” he added. “Nobody stops here out of choice. I wanted to make Port Talbot a go-to place, not a go-through place.”
Slave Labour in London
In protest at the use of sweatshops churning out memorabilia for 2012’s London Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, Banksy painted the image of an urchin boy knelt before a sewing machine producing Union Jack bunting on the side of a Poundland shop in Wood Green, north London.
But nine months later the wall containing the art was chiselled away and the Banksy vanished, popping up across the pond in Miami, where it was put on sale by an auction house for $500,000 (£316,000).
The proposed sale sparked fury from Wood Green residents, who demanded it back. Slave Labour was eventually returned to the UK and sold at auction in June 2013 for £750,000. It was sold on again in 2018 for £561,000 to artist Ron English, who claimed he would whitewash the painting to protest against the sale of street art.
“We’re tired of people stealing our stuff off the streets and re-selling it so I’m just going to buy everything I can get my hands on and whitewash it,” he vowed.
