Banksy rat collection could fetch £120k at auction

Banksy's Gangsta Rat is going under the hammer next month

A collection of work by street artist Banksy is expected to fetch £120,000 when it goes under the hammer next month.

Several of the elusive Bristol street artist's rat artworks will be auctioned on 11 July at Julien's Auctions Street Art Invasion sale in Los Angeles.

The collection includes Umbrella Rat, which was sprayed onto a large steel door in an S-Bahn station in Berlin’s Mitte area in 2004. Gangsta Rat and one of Banksy's Placard Rats are also on offer.

They are on sale alongside other pioneering street artists' works.

Banksy's Placard Rats was originally stencilled onto a newsagent's board in London's Gray's Inn Road in 2004 in the hope that passers-by would add their own message to it.

However, the one being auctioned has remained untouched and is expected to sell for between £30,000 and £40,000.

Both Umbrella Rat and Gangsta Rat, which were sprayed onto an Edinburgh street bollard in 2009, are expected to fetch between £20,000 and £40,000.

Banksy has caught the public's attention with installations such as Dismaland "bemusement park", which opened in Weston-super-Mare in 2015, and most recently, a tree mural in the London Borough of Islington.

Banksy's placard piece is expected to sell for between £30,000 and £40,000

Other works going under the hammer include a Money Bag mosaic created by French street artist, Invader, which was affixed to the side of a building in Hong Kong in 2015. It is expected to fetch between £8,000 and £10,000.

An alien mosaic - thought to be one of Invader’s earliest works - is also on offer and is expected to sell for between £4,500 and £6,500.

Works by activist, DJ and skateboarder, Shepard Fairey, best-known for his Barack Obama Hope poster, are also up for sale, including his Hand Of Doom – Sound Of Music piece.