Where's London's missing Banksy?

London Centric investigates a tale of East End rivalries, dubious financial declarations, the global art market, and the "curse of Banksy".

Illustration by Carly A-F, commissioned by London Centric.

“It’s the police!” shouted Margaret Smorthit, when London Centric began asking questions of her husband Steve on the doorstep of their house. The reality, I explained, was worse: I was a journalist who wanted to know about a financial deal involving one of Banksy’s best known London artworks. Steve started to explain that he couldn’t discuss the issue. Margaret ordered her husband to get inside their house immediately and stop talking: “No communication! Shut the door!”

The Smorthits may have good reason to want to avoid the media.

London Centric has spent the last seven months investigating the complicated fate of Banksy’s Yellow Line Flower Painter, which was painted on the wall of the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club in 2007. Recently, the Standard recommended tourists visit the artwork, one of the artist’s most famous works in the capital, while noting that over time the stencil “has become barely visible”.

This description surprised London Centric — because the stencil of an exhausted painter, insured for £550,000, is very much still visible.

It just isn’t in Bethnal Green. It’s more than 5,000 miles away.

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With Banksy’s artworks regularly selling for millions of pounds, you might think that having one of his murals painted on the side of your building is a ticket to riches. But many talk of a “Banksy curse”, where the costs and stress of dealing with it outweigh the financial benefits.

The Bethnal Green Banksy, cursed or not, has driven a community apart – and the dispute is now heading to the high court. It’s a story that spans the global art market, curious financial record keeping, and an East End feud.

Banksy’s Yellow Line Flower Painter as it appeared when it was first painted in 2007.

In the background is an archetypal London row over whether an historic working men’s club should be saved as a community arts venue, or sold to developers for millions of pounds, handing vast sums of money to its ageing members.

But the missing piece of the puzzle, which hasn’t been told before, is the fate of the Banksy. We were trying to ask Steve Smorthit what he knew about its highly-disputed and barely-documented sale, which saw it chipped off the wall, restored, then taken far away from Bethnal Green.

Who had the authority to remove the mural, who stands to make money from it, and where on earth in the world is it?

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