Buy a building, get a Banksy. ‘Well Hung Lover’ Bristol property goes on sale
By Rosa Rahimi, CNN
London (CNN) — A Banksy mural in Bristol, southwestern England, is set to be sold at auction next year, along with the building it was created on.
“Well Hung Lover” was painted on the side of a building on Bristol’s Frogmore Street in 2006, with the city’s residents later voting to keep the mural.
The mural shows a naked man clinging to a windowsill while a suited man peers out, seemingly searching for the lover while a woman stands next to him.
Blue splatters of paint have since come to accompany the mural after it was defaced.
The building, which once housed a sexual health clinic, will be put up for auction by Hollis Morgan, an estate agency and auction house in Bristol.
In February, prospective buyers will have the opportunity to bid on a 250-year lease for the Georgian property, which has been given a guide price of £700,000 (about $890,000).
The property also has a Grade II listing, which means it is of special architectural or historical interest and has to be preserved.
According to the estate agency, the five-story building has a basement nightclub and vacant upper floors, with the potential to be converted into apartments.
And the original Bansky that graces one of its external walls can’t go anywhere.
“The purchaser will be required to accept a restrictive covenant in the lease ensuring that the image cannot be removed from the building,” explained the listing.
While the future owner has to ensure the “Well Hung Lover” stays put, they have no obligation to maintain it.
The city of Bristol has no official street art policy, instead recognizing that “street art is created not as a permanent work of art but as a form of protest which is usually, but not always, created illegally and without the permission of the owner of the building,” the listing adds.
“As such, the life of any image as a work of art will evolve and change over time depending on how the work weathers or indeed is subsequently painted over or removed.”
Although Banksy’s true identity remains a mystery, it’s been widely reported that the street artist may have been born in Bristol in the 1970s.
Last year, a Banksy mural in Dover, southern England, valued at around £1 million ($1.2 million), was lost for good after the building it was painted on was knocked down. The mural, which depicted a worker chipping away at one of the 12 yellow stars on the blue European Union flag, appeared the year after Britain voted to leave the bloc in a controversial referendum.
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