Banksy (the unidentified British street artist) made the first version of *Girl with Balloon* in 2002, stencilled on a wall near Waterloo Bridge in the South Bank district of London. The image is this: a small girl in profile reaches her hand toward a red heart-shaped balloon; the balloon slips slightly out of her reach in the wind. The stencilled text alongside reads 'There is always hope'.

The image quickly took on a life of its own. Banksy's signature technique — stencil plus street — is cheap and easily reproducible; the work reappeared in many cities in countless variations. It was often linked to humanitarian themes — war, refugees, economic inequality: in 2014, during the Syrian civil war, a 'girl holding on to a balloon while the country goes to war' version was adapted; on the anniversary of the Brexit vote in 2017 the same girl was shown letting go of a balloon turning into the British flag.

On 5 October 2018, at a Sotheby's London auction, Banksy's framed Girl with Balloon (a studio version of the original stencil) sold for £1.04 million. Right after the hammer fell, a mechanism hidden in the back of the frame revealed itself to be a paper shredder: the painting began to fall 'strip by strip' out of its own frame. The salesroom finished in a mix of applause and shock. Banksy released an Instagram video showing he had hidden the mechanism in the painting years earlier.

The work was re-signed under the title 'Love is in the Bin' and the sale was deemed valid. Three years later, in October 2021, the same work resold at Sotheby's for £18.5 million — a Banksy record. With this event Banksy staged for viewers the auction market's own contradictions: street-art scepticism versus speculative price bubble.