Back in 2004 Banksy journeyed to Jamaica and as you might expect, left a little something behind. Four years and some months later the same Jamaican, Peter Dean Rickards, that revealed Banksy's identity several months back got the "brilliant" idea to remove the cement wall from outside a small pub on Mona Road.
Rickards is also the photographer whom documented the entire process and is now selling the photos (10 total) on eBay starting at $100,000 for the set. Here's where it gets even crazier... buy the photos and you get the wall for free (plus about $10,000 for shipping)! The photo above shows the piece in storage (with security, no doubt). The video below shows the dismantling of the art outside the pub. And after the jump Rickards explains how this all went down.
As listed on eBay:
The Rock is a series of photos by world renowned photographer Peter Dean Rickards of The Afflicted Yard .
These 48x 32cm photos are printed on aluminum and signed by the photographer. They are a single-run set and will not be reprinted or re-signed. They reveal the new art of art deconstruction.
'The Rock' chronicles the usurp of Banksy artwork in Kingston Jamaica in August of 2008. These photos will make a splash in any gallery or personal collection. Imagine them mounted on a wall in chronological order only to lead viewers to the piece de resistance - the very wall that contains and original Banksy piece stencil signed by the artist that comes for FREE when you purchase the photos.
The bonus wall with Banksy's original piece is roughly 60 inches by 55 inches and about 7 inches thick. It weighs approximately 2000 pounds. Done by the artist in 2004 on Mona road in Kingston, Jamaica
If you have any questions at all please contact us. Shipping for the Wall to your door will be roughly $10k. This is the artcoup of the year.
Peter Dean Rickards explains The Rock
It was a non-eventful day when he actually drew them. He bought some construction paper from a local pharmacy and cut the stuff out. Then he drew this stencil of a girl on an exterior wall and some rabbits on the inside the pub itself. I kind of just stood there taking his picture because it was something to do. I had already captured his face back at Buju’s studio where he had done some other stuff so this was just extra. I didn’t really think much of it. I mean I live in a place where people get shot for marking up people’s walls (usually with a paintbrush), so a few sprayed stencils on the wall of a pub didn’t strike me as particularly interesting.
Later when I heard how much his stuff was selling for, I contemplated going back and chopping the wall down. It was there for years and I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought about doing it. Mona road is heavily travelled by a lot of foreign students on their way to the university so people from all over the world would often mention it, but nobody ever took the steps to cut it down…till this last August when I got a email from someone asking about my knowledge of the locations Banksy had tagged. That’s when I figured I should probably go get it before someone else did.
The wall is the last remaining tag that he did in Jamaica that can be seen in public. It’s also the only remaining stencil that has the tag BANKSY on it. The other ones were:
- A bridge in Charleton gully which was painted over.
- A rusting old ship near the airport (a stencil of a skull, crossbones and the signature ‘Banksy’has since faded)
- Buju Banton’s studio in Kingston ( where there is another ‘balloon girl’ and some flying insects.
The wall is 60 inches by 55 inches and about 7 inches thick. It weighs like 2000 pounds though that is just a guess. I spent the day getting a bunch of drunk guys to cut it down and raise it onto a flatbed truck tied to one of those sealtbelt-type industrial straps. I was amazed that it didn’t smash to pieces which would have really been an incredible waste of energy and patience. All the guys in that video (including me) had no real idea how to cut the thing down (much less move it) and were completely impaired by the time we actually got it tied to a backhoe (borrowed from a nearby construction site). Ironically, the damn thing almost fell on me in which case there would be a much funnier headline : 'Jamaican who revealed Banksy killed by falling artwork'.
Large Photos From The Collection [watermarked]
eBay: THE ROCK : 10 single run photographs on Banksy Art
website: The Afflicted Yard