New Plan to Auction Banksy Mural Rekindles Battle

For a work scarcely a year old, “Slave Labor (Bunting Boy)” by the British graffiti artist Banksy has been at the center of more than its share of battles, and a new one has broken out with the Sincura Group announcing that it will auction the mural at the London Film Museum on June 2.

The mural, which shows a young boy, stenciled in black and white, sepia and grey, creating red, white and blue Union Jacks on a sweat-shop era sewing machine, made its first splash last May, when it cropped up on a wall in the Turnpike Lane neighborhood of North London. Given the timing of its appearance, during the Diamond Jubilee celebrations commemorating Queen Elizabeth II’s six-decade reign, and the mysterious Banksy’s reputation for social comment, the piece was taken as an acerbic commentary on the British class system, the economy, or the Jubilee itself.

Then it suddenly vanished, its whereabouts unknown until February, when Fine Art Auctions Miami included it in auction of contemporary works, with an expected selling price between $500,000 to $700,000. The Haringey Council, which represents the district where Bansky had created the painting, cried foul, and after insisting that they had the piece legitimately, the auction house backed down.

Now it’s déjà vu all over again. The Sincura Group has said that the piece has been “sensitively restored under a cloak of secrecy,” and that it plans to sell it at an auction that also includes works by Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol. And the Haringey Council is having none of it.

“This is a piece of art given to the community for public enjoyment,” Alan Strickland, a member of the council, told the BBC, “and people will find it galling that you can only view this work at an expensive champagne reception, when it belongs with the people of north London, not a private owner.”

“We saw the level of public anger last time, as the story went around the world,” he added, “and I expect the same this time.”

The auction by the London-based Sincura Group â€" which describes itself as “concierge specialists who pride themselves on obtaining the unobtainable” â€" is the latest obstacle for a campaign, backed by the council, to restore the work to its original site.