A \u00a3270,000 Banksy print was stolen from a central London gallery in just over 30 seconds, a court has heard.<\/p>\n
Larry Fraser, 48, has pleaded guilty to burglary, jurors at Kingston Crown Court have heard, but 54-year-old James Love faces trial over the theft.<\/p>\n
Fraser smashed the glass front door of the Grove Gallery in Fitzrovia at around 23:00 BST on 8 September 2024, stepped inside and stole a limited edition print belonging to the street artist’s Girl with Balloon series.<\/p>\n
A statement from James Ryan, the owner of the gallery, said CCTV footage recorded that 36 seconds passed between a masked man starting to break in and leaving with the print.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors allege Mr Love, said to own a large number of love-heart based pictures, drove to the gallery on the morning of the burglary and helped store the print after it was stolen.<\/p>\n
The prosecution also alleges Mr Love was in regular contact with Fraser the day of the theft.<\/p>\n
Thirteen original Banksy artworks, some of which were signed, were selected to be put on display at the Grove Gallery, the court heard.<\/p>\n
Mr Ryan said the artwork was first printed in 2004 and is a limited edition of 150. <\/p>\n
This was number 72.<\/p>\n
He said: “It was owned by a private collector and is valued at \u00a3270,000.”<\/p>\n
After leaving the gallery, Fraser took the Banksy into a nearby property where he left the artwork, jurors heard.<\/p>\n
Sukhvinder Singh, a night watchman at the property, described his shock at being pushed aside by two men who entered the building late on 8 September.<\/p>\n
Assisted by a Punjabi interpreter, Mr Singh told the court that he noticed a painting in a toilet which had not been there earlier that evening, describing it as depicting a “doll” who was “flying something like a kite”.<\/p>\n
He said: “After that when I saw the painting there I heard some noise on the other side of the (front) door.<\/p>\n
“Somebody was trying to insert a white plastic bit into the door and trying to open the door.”<\/p>\n
Mr Singh told jurors he opened the door to find a white man and a black man.<\/p>\n
“I was very shocked,” he continued. “They pushed me out of the way and went inside. I tried to ask them in Punjabi, ‘who are you?'”<\/p>\n
He said they went “straight” to the bathroom, picked up the painting and left.<\/p>\n
“The white male was just saying: ‘Sorry sorry, brother, sorry sorry’ in English,” Mr Singh went on.<\/p>\n
“I said ‘why did you come inside, how did you come inside?’<\/p>\n
“They came in a rush, they just came in a great hurry, they were there barely for two to three minutes, they picked it up and left.<\/p>\n
“The only thing that was said was ‘sorry’.”<\/p>\n
Love, of North Stifford, Grays, Essex, denies burglary and the trial continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A \u00a3270,000 Banksy print was stolen from a central London gallery in just over 30 seconds, a court…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-26554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}