A mural by the anonymous street artist Banksy critical of Brexit has officially been demolished along with the crumbling building on which it was painted. Officials have now promised to salvage at least some of the remains.
The three-story painting appeared on the side of a building in Dover in the U.K. in 2017, a year after the landmark referendum that inspired it. In it, a worker is pictured standing on a latter and chiseling off one of the stars on the E.U. flag. At the time, its value was assessed by Banksy collector John Brandler at £1 million ($1.2 million).
In 2019, scaffolding was installed in front of the building and it was whitewashed, but some of the elements were later restored. It had also previously been vandalized. Dover acquired the land and some adjacent properties in 2022 but it was later estimated that retaining the mural would have cost Dover taxpayers about £2–4 million ($2.5–5 million).
“We are working with the company to identify what can and can’t be done with the bits that they’ve taken away,” Dover District Council member Kevin Mills told The Sun tabloid. “The whole thing can’t be saved anyway. It was a very old building.”
Mills also suggested that officials might be able to salvage the yellow stars of the E.U. flag and the stencil of the man on the stepladder, but that the blue coloring of the flag—the bulk of the footprint of the painting—could not be saved.
“What we’ve made sure is the council taxpayer isn’t given a bill to try to maintain something we might not even be able to maintain or even salvage to some extent,” he said. “We’ve got digital photographs so it’s possible to duplicate something.”
Artnet News has reached out to Mills and DDS Demolition, the company contracted to demolish the building, for more information but did not hear back by press time.
A spokesperson for the company confirmed to The Independent that pieces of the mural retrieved from the site were sent to an art restorer who has previously worked on Banksy paintings.
“DDS are unable to share the outcome of the art restorer’s efforts as yet whilst the pieces are still being assessed, therefore we cannot confirm the plans for the salvaged pieces of art,” the spokesperson said. “We will share the full story once we have news of whether restoration of all or any parts of the piece is possible.”
The mural was on one of three “increasingly dilapidated and dangerous” buildings the Dover council announced would be demolished earlier this year as part of a plan to redevelop the Bench Street site. The scheme includes building a creative center, an education campus, business, center, and a park. At the time, the city council said it had appointed the Madrid-based Factum Arte to “scan and preserve” the Banksy so it could be recreated digitally or even physically in the future.
“In collaboration with Dover District Council, in March 2023 a team from Factum Foundation was tasked to record the shape and surface of the painted over wall in high-resolution, using LiDAR and photogrammetry, in order to preserve the digital data of the painted wall, which will become part of the town’s historical records in addition to the countless pictures taken of the work before its disappearance,” Factum Arte said in an announcement at the time.
The press release appears to have since been deleted from the organization’s website was retrieved through a Google cache. It was not immediately clear why the announcement has been removed.
“The high-resolution data can now be used to recreate the artwork in digital or even physical form as a facsimile, in a new location around the town or elsewhere, subject to Banksy’s approval,” the Factum Arte statement had said.
Artnet News has also reached out to Banksy’s authenticating body Pest Control for comment regarding the archive of his work.
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