The famous street artist Banksy has posted a video on his website where he shows that “in rehearsals” the shredding of his million-dollar artwork “Girl With a Balloon” had worked “every time”, with footage of a test run showing a print passing through the shredder completely, so that none of the canvas remained intact.
At the end, the video notes: “In rehearsals it worked every time…” as it shows the piece going the whole way through the shredding machine with slips of canvas falling to the floor.
“The Girls With the Balloon” self-destructed moments after an anonymous bidder offered a whopping $1.4 million to buy it at the Sotheby’s auction held in London earlier this month.
In 2006, the artist made a single copy of the painting with acrylic paints on canvas. The work was enclosed in a heavy gilded frame, into which, as it turned out, Banksy had built in a shredder.
The very moment the auctioneer announced the name of the winning bidder, the bottom half of the artwork was sucked into the shredder concealed in the frame. Only part of the artwork survived.
Banksy later posted a video on his Instagram account where he said that several years ago he had secretly embedded a shredder into the picture.
There has been speculation that Banksy was present at the October 5 auction.
READ MORE: London Auction Crowd Stunned As Banksy's Balloon Girl Self Destructs
A picture revealed by British website Bristol Live shows a person purported to be behind the shredding itself. The outlet claims to have been sent a photograph captioned “Banksy’s little helper” by someone allegedly connected to the street art world in Bristol.
The pic with a snapchat eye-emoji on it shows a man in a white scarf, wearing some kind of a wrist band or watch, hat and black glasses with some device on him allegedly in the same Sotheby's room where the shredding took place.
