Banksy, "Laugh Now But One Day We´ll Be In Charge" ., 2001

Banksy Laugh Now.

”Laugh Now but one day we will be in charge” Unique work 2001. Aerosol spray paint on heavy stock. Signed Banksy

in the stencil. Exhibited in Covent Garden in 2009 ”Please Love Me – 10 years of Banksy”. Framed 145 x 120 cm. Depicted several times.

This is the very first impression of the monkey with both feet’s and antennae. The only existing there is. Long e-mail

from Pest Control Office ”We have shown the work to the artist, yes he did it”…Gift from artist to EMI executive

who lent his studio to Banksy to paint in. Includes letter from EMI executive and specific PCO mail.

Banksy has the very same image on his own website made from the very same stencil. With feet and antennae. See last photo.

Work also features in the NETFLIX movei "How to sell a Banksy" - it´s seen in connection with the Bankrobber London show "Laugh Now" where the work featured as the highlight.

The work is highly known in collector circles. Much smaller impression of the Monkey 40 x 50 cm has sld for over 500.000 USD:

In 2013 Artnet Auction in writing estimated the value at 350.000-400.000 USD. Auctionata the same.

Prices on Banksy originals has since then exploded.

Pest Control Office – YES Banksy did this….read story below.

On November 16th 2008 there is a article in theage.com.au where collectores daron & May Robinson tells their story on how the purchased the work in 2002 knowing it was a Banksy.
”We first started seeing Banksy´s grafitti-art around London in 2002 and just loved it. Everyone did. …after that we began collecting more banksy, we bought a couple of prints and some Di_faced notes, and we have watched the calue of his work skyrocket. Last year we contacted his official authentication company, Pest Control, to confirm our monkey was authentic and we recently got a reply back saying: ”this is by the artist we have shown it to the artis and he confirms. It was done as a test stencil before the artist hid the streets…it was not intended as a work of art…!!!!....therefore a certificate of authentication can´t be issued…” We don’t really care because we love Banksy and that why we bought it, but we do think it´s odd to say that some of my art isn´t art…If we had got the authentication our stencil would be worth 300.000 USD and not 100.000. (this was in 2008).

A copy of the original e-mail form Pest Control Office is included. The e-mail dated September 18th 2008 confirms Banksy made this work. The e-mail is sent from PCO to Daron Robinson. PCO only formed in 2008. The painting is from 2001 so before official works had to have a certificate.

(Jo Hillier was at the the time a music producer with EMI. He has sold many works of art for and by Banksy. In a long article from Bergen in Norway (unfortunately only in norwegian) Hillier is mentioned several times. He visited Bergen in 2000 with Banksy. This was before Banksy was known and before prices exploded. )

Literature

Seen on several occasions in the Netflix documentary "How to sell a Banksy". The work is exhibited at Bankrobber Gallery London.

In an interview with theage.com.au "Just Canvassing" (still online) May and Darob Robison offers some valuable information on how they became the second owners of the work:

"On the internet Daron and May Robinson took a leap of faith when they bought an unauthorised Banksy stencil off eBay. "We first started seeing Banksy's graffiti-art around London in 2002 and just loved it. Everyone did. They were so clever and witty and the more we saw, the more we wanted one. "At that time his original works were selling for about $7000, which we couldn't afford. Then we saw one of his monkey stencils for sale on eBay from an unknown private seller and decided to bid on it. We almost lost the auction because I'd forgotten to pay my last eBay fees, but finally we won it for $1500 and had to get out a loan to pay. "We met the seller on the street, handed over the cash and he gave us the stencil, which was printed on the back of an old band poster. We took it home thinking, 'Oh no, we've been duped'. We really loved it but it was a lot of money for us then, so we had to see it as an investment, too. We did some research and discovered it was real; his studio used to be above a record label and he would use their old promo posters to test out his stencils. ''After that we began collecting more Banksy, we bought a couple of prints and some Di-faced notes, and have watched the value of his work skyrocket. Last year we contacted his official authentication company, Pest Control, to confirm our monkey was authentic and we recently got back a reply saying: 'This is by the artist but it was done as a test stencil and not intended as a work of art, therefore a certificate of authentication can't be issued.' We don't really care because we love Banksy and that's why we bought it, but we do think it's odd to say that some of my art isn't art. If we had got the authentication our stencil would be worth $300,000. With this letter it's worth nearer to $100,000, not that we're complaining!" - This was in 2008.

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