For the last week a most interesting piece of Street Art has been on display outside auction house Bonhams ahead of its sale under the hammer yesterday. The work which fetched some £218,000, demonstrating the value placed upon this artists work, is from Banksy’s first US exhibition held in LA within an industrial warehouse in 2006.

This has been the first time this piece has been on display since its initial showing a decade ago. Certainly something we couldn’t miss going to take a view of upon hearing of the showing just before it was sold. The work presents a most interesting canvas, namely the genuine retired SWAT Van from the LA Police force, and in turn a well chosen subject matter comprising his distinctive stencil works focused on dark humour and satirical representations of social themes. In this case the work features on the one side Banksy has placed a group of heavily armed special forces agents about to be tricked by the mischievous little boy set to pop his inflated paper bag, in turn sending the agents into action. On the other side of the van is an unsuspecting Dorothy, from the Wizard of OZ, swamped by a sea of tags, presenting quite the contrast to the other main image.