Haringey Council, via European Pressphoto Agency “Slave Labor (Bunting Boy)†was painted in 2012.In the latest and perhaps final installment of one of the art world’s most amusing controversies of 2013, “Slave Labor (Bunting Boy),†the satirical work stenciled by the graffiti artist Banksy on a wall in North London, was sold at a private auction held by the London-based Sincura Group â€" which describes itself as “concierge specialists who pride themselves on obtaining the unobtainable†â€" on Sunday for what the BBC reported was more than £750,000, or about $1.1 million.
The work, in which Banksy depicted a young boy in black and white, sepia and grey, sewing rea, white and blue bunting on an antique sewing machine, was taken as a tart comment on Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations when it appeared on the wall of a discount shop in the Wood Green section of North London last May. Like many of Banksy’s works, it was created in the dead of night, and quickly became a focus of interest.
That interest was rekindled in February when the mural vanished, resurfacing in Miami as part of an auction of contemporary works. The auction house, Fine Art Auctions Miami, expected it to fetch between $500,000 to $700,000. That led the Haringey Council, which represents the district where Banksy created the piece, to undertake an international campaign to have the work returned, and though the Miami auctioneers backed down, “Slave Labor†did not find its way back to Haringey.
Instead, the Sincura Group announced last month that it would sell the piece, along with works by Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol, at an auction at the London Film Museum, in Covent Garden. Not surprisingly, the Haringey Council and others - including Lynn Featherstone, a member of Parliament who represents Wood Green - took up the cause again.
Their protests, at least, yielded some clarifications. The sellers, Bloomberg reported, were Robert Alan Davis and Leslie Steven Gilbert, the proprieters of Wood Green Investments, which owns the building on which the work appeared. Because a piece of graffiti becomes the property of the owners of the wall on which it is drawn, Mr. Davis and Mr. Gilbert were free to dispose of it as they saw fit - which explains the contention by both Fine Art Auctions Miami and the Sincura Group that they had no problem with the work’s provenance.
“It should be noted,†Sincura said in a statement, “that both Scotland Yard and the FBI have issued statements that there is no evidence of criminality involved in the removal of this illegally painted mural and therefore no case to answer.â€
Sincura also presented both the show in which it displayed the Banksy work, and the auction that followed, as a public service, of sorts, arguing that its goal was to find a British buyer for the piece, which would otherwise become “an integral part of an important private collection of Banksy street works†in the United States.
The buyer of the work, and its eventual destination, were not revealed on Sunday.
