Shares in Banksy's Valentine's Day Mascara offered to public

The public will soon be able to buy a piece of a Banksy mural which was first discovered on the side of a house in shares of £120 each.

Valentine's Day Mascara appeared on the side of a house in Margate on 14 February, this year, and was soon confirmed to be genuine on the elusive artist's Instagram account.

It depicts a 1950s housewife with a swollen eye and missing tooth, wearing an apron and yellow washing-up gloves, and throwing a man into a freezer.

It incorporated a real-life chest freezer, a broken garden chair, a blue crate and an empty beer bottle, which were all removed by Thanet Council hours after it appeared, but later returned.

From Tuesday 27,000 shares in it will be available for the public to buy at £120 each on the art marketplace, Showpiece.com, which claims on its website to "make it possible for every collector to buy into the most extraordinary items in the world".

The piece has been valued at £6m.

The owner of the building, who removed the anonymous graffiti artist's piece earlier this year to help preserve it, has been bombarded with offers to buy it ever since it appeared - but has been determined that it should stay in Kent.

Selling off shares in it means it can stay in its temporary home, at Dreamland Margate, an amusement park already housing a collection of artworks.

A spokesperson for Dreamland said they were "delighted" to be able to continue to give the artwork a home where members of the public could see it for free when the theme park was open.

Julian Usher, chief executive of Red Eight Gallery, which has represented the original owner, said: "The fact that it will be accessible for people to actually own a share in is wonderful, and it also means the mural can now make Margate its official home."

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Showpiece bosses will also be raising funds for the national domestic abuse charity Refuge.

Managing director of Showpiece, Aaron Carter, said: "Like many of Banksy's works, Valentine's Day Mascara highlights a serious subject matter.

"We hope that by working with our charity partners, we can continue to promote the work they accomplish and support the causes Banksy is concerned with."

The true identity of the Bristol-born artist, whose works can sell for millions of pounds on the art market, remains a mystery.

Banksy previously confirmed he had spent time in Ukraine after posting a video of an artist spray-painting designs in the war-torn country and speaking to locals.

One of his biggest projects was Dismaland, a dystopian theme park in Weston-super-Mare back in 2015.

A solo show, titled Cut & Run - 25 Years Card Labour, is currently on display in Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), featuring many of the stencils used to create his most iconic artworks spanning from 1998 to the present day.