Sotheby’s hosted the 2018 sale where Banksy’s Girl with Balloon began shredding.
The work was offered in London in October 2018 as a framed version of Girl with Balloon. Immediately after the auctioneer declared it sold, a concealed mechanism inside the frame activated and partially shredded the image. The event was witnessed by the audience and quickly became one of the most widely reported moments in contemporary art.
Banksy later gave the transformed work the title Love Is in the Bin. Sotheby’s confirmed that the piece had sold for £1,042,000, including the buyer’s premium, before the shredding occurred. The auction house subsequently treated the partially destroyed work as a new artwork.
The incident is sometimes incorrectly attributed to Christie’s, another major London auction house. Sotheby’s was the venue for this particular Banksy performance and sale.