FANCY a Banksy? Yes, a piece by that guy whose work usually occupies a wall in a busy sctreet can be yours.
All you need is about £80,000. That is the price that will be asked when a Stoke Newington gallery puts on show the original canvas at right. The pic will be labelled POA (price on application), but journalists have no time for that sort of thing.
The guerrilla artist, who may or may not be former public schoolboy Robin Gunningham, from Bristol in Gloucestershire, has become a big moneymaker for galleries throughout the world that can obtain prints of his works.
Enter Hang-Up Pictures. Though it claims to be “Europe’s leading online urban art gallery”, it has a vibrant retail premises in Stoke Newington.
Last August 2014 it set up a Banksy Bunker in the basement and it is being redesigned in time for an official spring 2014 opening.
On the Hang-Up website gallery manager Carla Nizzola describes the bunker as a “permanent space, showcasing rare, unseen or limited editions by one of the 100 most expensive living artists”.
Street artist to big-money bestseller. How inextricably linked are art and finance.
David Altheer 160215
* Hang-Up Gallery, 56 Stoke Newington High Street N16 7PB. The bunker launch will probably be in March 2014.
* Emboldened underscored words in most cases indicate a hyperlink. If a link does not work, it is probably means that site has not been maintained.
* Backstory: Street – or streetwise? An issue in N16 and Apocalypse Stanley: Donwood in Stokey