Banksy’s other fine art: Moving the masterpieces

The Valentine’s Day Mascara mural appeared like all the rest of Banksy’s works, suddenly and without warning, causing a stir. The scene, discovered on a quiet Margate street before the romantic holiday last year, shows a woman in 1950s-style clothing, sporting a bruised and swollen eye, with a smile and missing tooth. She is pushing a man into an abandoned freezer, leaving his graffitied feet sticking out of one side, in an apparent commentary on domestic violence against women. Within hours of its discovery, the anonymous graffiti artist had claimed the artwork on his Instagram page, resulting in a predictable throng of onlookers. “The lady who lives at the house was in a bit of a flap, because she had 50 people outside her house,” Julian Usher, chief executive of the Red Eight Gallery, tells The National. “So she phoned her landlady. And her landlady phoned us.” The gallery, more than 100km away in London, had hosted a Banksy exhibition when it opened a couple of years previously. “She typed in gallery Banksy in Google and we popped up,” says Mr Usher. Banksy’s Valentine’s Day Mascara moved from the street to Dreamland Margate “She said I don’t know for sure...