Fun fact: Banksy painted these monkeys for a Brighton nightclub before he was famous
This is the original Laugh Now installation Banksy painted for the Ocean Rooms nightclub in Brighton in 2002.
It was enormous — around six metres long — and formed part of a load of work he did around the club, including several rats and a life-size winged punk painted on the back of a toilet door.
The monkey panels were taken down and, rather wonderfully, spent years stored in the owner’s loft before eventually turning up at Bonhams in 2008, where they sold for £228,000.
The punk had an even stranger life. During various nightclub refurbs it was repeatedly painted over and basically forgotten about. Years later it was discovered underneath all the paint, professionally restored and eventually advertised with a £1 million price tag, although I don’t believe it actually sold for anything like that.
The rats caused another problem. Pest Control wouldn’t authenticate them, which absolutely murdered their resale value. Around 2021 I was told one had attracted an offer of roughly £20k, which still isn’t bad considering it had effectively cost next to nothing.
Rather wonderfully, an Ocean Rooms Radar Rat then resurfaced at auction in 2022 with a six-figure estimate.
And according to Brighton folklore, Banksy was originally paid a pretty measly amount for decorating the club — with an ounce of weed allegedly involved in the deal. I can’t verify that last bit, but it’s a much better story if it’s true.
Quite funny to think that what was basically nightclub decoration in Brighton twenty-odd years ago spent years gathering dust in a loft before becoming one of Banksy’s most recognisable images