Banksy truck expected to fetch more than 拢1m at Goodwood Revival auction
The grafitti-covered Volvo FL6 box truck was decorated by the artist in 2000.
Saturday 31 August 2019 10:17, UK
A truck given a graffiti makeover by the artist Banksy is expected to fetch between 拢1m - 拢1.5m at auction.
The anonymous street artist, who has been active since the 1990s, decorated the 17-tonne Volvo FL6 box truck in 2000.
The vehicles usually sell for a figure in the low thousands second-hand.
Bonhams will auction the truck off alongside the likes of Aston Martins and Porsches at the Goodwood Revival sale on 14 September.
Ralph Taylor, head of postwar and contemporary art at Bonhams, said: "Banksy is arguably the most important artist to have emerged since the millennium and this, his largest commercial work, represents a new high watermark of quality for works of his to appear at auction.
"The composition bears all the hallmarks of this peerless agent provocateur."
Banksy was at an open-air party on a Spanish hillside to celebrate the millennium when he was presented with the truck by Mojo, the co-founder of Turbozone International Circus.
The touring company is known for its extravagant pyrotechnics.
Banksy, then an obscure graffiti artist, started painting the truck and continued to work on it for the next two weeks.
The artist did not become a worldwide household name until 2006 with his exhibition Barely Legal in Los Angeles, but the images on the truck show how calls for anarchy and social change were already central to his work.
It features a male figure swinging a hammer towards metal cogs, while the background shows flying monkeys and red stars with the word "circus" stencilled across the back end of the vehicle.
Soldiers can be seen running away from a cannon on the other side of the truck.
The title of the piece, which is named "Charge", is written in large letters above their heads.