GERT and Garry Coutts were at home in North London when they had a strange call from the tenant renting their house in Lowestoft, Suffolk.
Hearing that scaffolding had been erected overnight, they assumed that the council was fixing the chimney.
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By the following morning it had disappeared to reveal a giant seagull, some 14ft in size, painted on the end of the wall of the house.
It was the largest work ever done by the famous yet anonymous street artist, Banksy.
In the foreground he had placed a real skip which had strips of insulation in it that resembled chips.
The piece, which appeared in August 2021, attracted worldwide attention with hundreds of people flocking to the site, some putting their young children in the skip that the gull was dive-bombing, to take photographs.
With talk of the art work being worth £3million, the stunned couple wondered what to do next.
But instead of making them a fortune, the street art has caused them years of anguish left them seriously out of pocket.
It eventually cost them in excess of £400,000 to have it removed and put in storage and they continue to fork out £3,000 a month to keep it there in the hope of eventually finding a buyer.
“It’s not a seagull, it’s an albatross!” says an angry Gert.
“At first you think you are gifted by Banksy but you are actually not.”
Their extraordinary story and that of another seaside home owner in Margate, Kent, are told in the BBC Sounds podcast The Banksy Story: When Banksy Comes to Town, presented by James Peak.
“I didn’t know what to think or what to do when I first saw it,” says Gert.
Amidst all the commotion, the local council decided to act and asked the couple’s permission to place a huge Perspex screen over the seagull.
“But it started hanging off because the wind got under it,” says Gert.
“The council then contacted us saying it could be dangerous to the public if it fell off and that we needed to replace it. I said, ‘Surely it’s your problem.’
“They wanted to put a preservation order on it and we would be liable for the upkeep of the artwork at a cost of £40,000 a year. So, there you go Banksy. Does he realise what the consequences are of his art work – or does he care?”
Depressed and sick
The co-owner of Gert and Garry’s house, Rod, managed to arrangea loan to get the wall removed.
In a huge undertaking, the 16-tonne structure was lifted off by crane overnight.
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After all costs were factored in, including road closure, it was an eye-watering sum in excess of £400,000.
But while experts usually value the price of a Banksy artwork in the millions, the reality of selling it on is very different as the unfortunate trio soon discovered.
All the auction houses they approached turn down the offer to try to sell it leaving Gert, Garry and Rod to pay £3,000 a month to keep it stored in a climate controlled-warehouse – and ruing the day Banksy came to town.
“I’m completely depressed and sick about it,” says Garry.
“I’ve done everything I can, tried to do the right things, and me and my wife have just had the p**s taken out of us. I’m so angry about what has gone on because of that a**ehole Banksy. It’s as simple as that.”
Rod adds: “Banksy does these things without thought of the consequences – or doesn’t give a damn about the consequences.”
To us he’s an uncaring, unthinking person who has had a massive detrimental impact
Rod
“He might say, just paint over it if you don’t want it but if we did that the public would say, ‘How dare you destroy such a phenomenal piece of art?’
“We can’t win. To us he’s an uncaring, unthinking person who has had a massive detrimental impact.
“It would have been great if we had got together and worked out how to get the artwork to remain in the public domain and, okay, we may want a little bit of money on top of that, but he has never come forward.”
Repeat offender
A similar tale happened to homeowner Sam, at her property in Margate.
“I was in bed on a miserable February morning when I checked my phone and there was a message from my tenant at the house, saying, ‘Sam, we need to talk,’” she recalls.
“She added a picture of the house with a Banksy on it.”
The work released on February 14, 2023 was called Valentine’s Day Mascara and featured a painting of a 50s-style housewife wearing an apron and yellow washing-up gloves.
With a missing front tooth and a swollen eye, she appears to have pushed her abusive husband into a real-life discarded freezer in front of the painting, with his protruding legs painted on the wall behind.
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Other real items included a frying pan at her feet with splashes of red on it, indicating it to be the bloodied murder weapon, an empty beer bottle and a broken white plastic garden chair.
Intriguingly, Sam works with domestic abuse charities, suggesting that the siting may not have been a coincidence.
“I am Kent born and bred and have a long association with Margate. I used to go on holiday there,” says Sam.
“There are two sides to Margate that I know – those who don’t have much money and who are really struggling on benefits, and the arty side with people from London who have gone there to capitalise on the property market.
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“For me, as a social entrepreneur, I believe there are ways to do good and make money. So, I wanted this to do as much good for as many people as we could.
“I thought we could use the art work to raise money for the domestic abuse charity, Oasis, in Margate. It would be great for the charity and for the town.
“The first thing I did was to Google, ‘What do you do when you wake up with a Banksy on your wall?’ I thought it would definitely provide the answers, step-by-step. But it said nothing.
Despite all the money and the palaver and the global attention, he [Banksy] is just a vandal
Sam
“So, I thought, right, I need to contact the council and find an art gallery that can advise me.
“The first one I rang didn’t really seem to get it, the second one was Red Eight and the guy who answered the phone said, ‘We’ll be there within an hour.’”
But the problem for the town was that Banksy had decided to do this work in the style of fly-tipped junk – something the council had been criticised for not getting to grips with.
Embarrassed by the public attention, council workmen were sent to remove the freezer and the other ‘rubbish’, leaving behind a by-now meaningless woman and disembodied pair of legs on the wall.
Public pressure
The public ridicule prompted a quick U-turn and they replaced the freezer but the frying pan had been lost in the rubbish tip.
Red Eight chief executive Julian managed to track down the person who had pinched the three-legged chair and had to pay over the odds for its return.
With the piece obviously so vulnerable, Julian and Sam went into partnership to have the wall removed for over £200,000 and placed on public exhibition at the Dreamland complex in Margate – along with the freezer and upturned chair – where they are hoping to one day find a buyer.
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“It’s cost more than the house is worth! That’s the bizarre thing,” says Sam.
“Somehow this has been gifted to us as our responsibility. The people of Margate also had a huge vested interest in it and that was really big pressure.
“There’s no precedent and it’s easy to look back with hindsight but at the time you are very quickly making decisions on things you don’t really understand or know anything about.
“Despite all the money and the palaver and the global attention, he [Banksy] is just a vandal.”
Rod, who has shared similar grief and expense with the ‘Lowestoft Seagull,’ shares Sam’s despair.
“There’s a certain amount of hypocrisy on Bankys’s part,” he says.
“He does all these street art works, gets a massive amount of publicity for it, which boosts the price of his art work, but he’s saying the people on whom he has imposed the artworks can’t have anything.
“They’ve got to live with the cost and the emotional disturbance.
“It’s clearly very difficult to sell 16 tonnes of brick and a skip.”
We have contacted Banksy’s representatives for comment.
What to do when Banksy comes to town
Opinions differ on whether waking up to a Banksy mural on your home is a blessing or a curse, so what should you do if you find yourself the unwitting host of the street art?
“It’s very much a seller’s market and so I would suggest acting quickly if you want to capitalise on the situation,” Julia Bell, art advisor and founder of Parapluie, told Tatler.
“You could also separate the artwork from the property and conduct a separate sale transaction. If you wish for the mural to remain on your property, you will need to take steps to protect it.
“You could also seek a preservation order from your local council, but there are conditional costs incurred by doing so.”
Steph Warren – the only person ever to work for Banksy without signing his non-disclosure agreement – told the first series of the BBC Podcast that situation is crucial for much of his art.
“With Banksy, where he puts the art is fundamental,” she says. “Remove the work from the precise place on the streets that he put it, and the work instantly loses its power. Context is everything.”
Now the owner of street-art gallery Stelladore in St Leonards, also believes painting over the work is better than tearing out walls.
“Rather than it costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, buy a five litre tub of emulsion and paint over it,” she says. “These things are not meant to be removed and stored. They are supposed to be looked at, admired, photographed and painted over.”
