At some point on the evening of February 13, 2023, under the cover of darkness, street artist Banksy stepped out of the shadows and set to work on creating his latest piece of public art.

Perhaps fittingly for a work just a few hundred yards from Margate’s Dreamland theme park, the work - called Valentine’s Day Mascara - has, since then, been on a remarkable rollercoaster ride.

Ripped from its intended home, it has been boxed up, exhibited in various places, shares in it sold, used to raise thousands for a local charity, seen multi-million pound buyers come and go and now, 22 months later, is returning, albeit temporarily, to the seaside town. It is a ride which has been drenched in considerable financial expense at every twist and turn.

Yet a buyer has still to be found - but then the market for a huge installation weighing some four tonnes and measuring four metres by three metres is niche to put it mildly. You’re going to need very deep pockets and an enormous space; this is not something to hang on your wall.

Nor, perhaps surprisingly, is it likely to ultimately sell for anything like the £6 million valuation it has received. Believe it or not, the market in Banksy works has deflated in recent years as global economic pressures have depressed the art market.

While most of us have to cut back on groceries and our heating bills, the super-rich who buy this sort of work have to reduce their spend on luxury goods like art and swanky watches.

But, perhaps most significantly, it has shone a light on the remarkable way the artist’s work is handled in today’s modern age. The clamour to remove it, monetise it and the key and significant role the artist’s own management company - called Pest Control - plays in it all.

Julian Usher is the CEO of Red Eight Gallery in London. He was called by the owners of the property on the day it emerged to first protect, then remove, then try and sell the work.

He explains: “Despite what many may think, it's not a case of 'I've got a Banksy on my wall, let's all celebrate'.

“All of a sudden you are sprung into a circus. You have reporters, you have the public gathering outside your house, you have it going out online.

“It's not just an 'Is it a Banksy?' question which has happened in the past and gets forgotten very quickly. He's declared it on his website and Instagram.”

Park Place is a narrow street not far from Margate’s traditional town centre; on a busy summer’s day, you’d be able to hear the rollercoasters and excited screams from those enjoying the rides at the nearby Dreamland.

It is a rather non-descript street - the rear of grand old properties line much of it and tatty garage doors the other.

Double-yellow lines run down both sides of the single-track street for the vast bulk of it and the mish-mash of property types and styles speaks of its history.

Because at one end, a string of terraced homes - late Victorian or Edwardian - ends abruptly. The row was once longer but bombs dropped during the Second World War interrupted the flow.

Sat alongside it, but set back from the road are now a string of post-war flats.

The now end-of-terrace 28 Park Road has a broad, white-washed wall. The perfect blank canvas, it seems, for the world’s most celebrated street artist.

He’s been no stranger to the county over the years. In 2014 he daubed Art Buff on the side of an old amusement arcade in Folkestone to coincide with the town’s triennial.

In 2017, he decorated the side of a property in Dover which runs alongside the main road to the port, with an enormous EU flag with a builder chipping off one of the stars as a nod towards Brexit. Just a month after his Margate piece, his Morning Is Broken appeared on the side of a soon-to-be-demolished derelict farmhouse in Herne Bay.

Quite why he decided to paint it on this particular Margate property remains open to ongoing debate.

The work itself appears to be a piece of social commentary on domestic violence. A 1950s housewife wearing an apron and with a black eye and missing tooth apparently pushing the perpetrator into a freezer. The freezer was, initially, removed by Thanet District Council amid safety concerns (in a move of almost artistic farce) before it was returned. A beer bottle, broken chair and a frying pan have long since gone missing - presumed pinched.

Was it a commentary on domestic abuse in Margate? Was it because the town enjoyed its hey-day in the 1950s yet despite a revival is still victim to the same, often hidden, problems as times gone-by?

His refusal to elaborate means it remains open to interpretation. Just the way, you suspect, he likes it.

“The fact is that Kent probably has more Banksys than anywhere else apart from London,” explains Will Ellsworth-Jones who has authored two books on the work of the artist. “My guess is that he has a good spotter who can find these sites for him in the area.

“I think Banksy chooses his sites with great care. To move it is to lose the point of it.”

None of the Kent pieces remain in situ - the Dover piece was whitewashed, the Herne Bay farmhouse demolished, the Folkestone piece removed, efforts to sell it fell flat and it eventually, after years of being in storage, was put back on public display (where it remains) but now relocated to Folkestone’s Creative Quarter.

Which begs the question, should more have been done to keep the Margate piece on that same wall? And should, as is often argued, local authorities have intervened despite the works being on private property?

Adds the author, whose upcoming book - Banksy’s Lost Works: The Trail of his Vanishing Street Art - is published by Batsford in February: “Do councils have a duty to protect his art? No, I don’t think so. This is street art and it should be left to live or die on the street. Banksy has never asked for his work to be protected. I don’t think it should be the council’s duty to try and protect it. Could they have stepped in to save the Banksy painted on a private house in Margate? I don’t think so. It is not their job.”

As February 14 dawned, the woman who has long rented the property, Polla Maria Oberczian, had something of a rude awakening.

She explained at the time: “My neighbour knocked on my door asking about something else, and I could see a chair by the wall and thought, 'What is that?'

"Then I looked over and saw the chest freezer and thought, 'Who put that there?' The neighbours are putting rubbish outside again."

Explains Julian Usher: “The tenant phoned the owner and the owner called us - it’s a marketplace we’re pretty familiar with. We arranged to meet the owner in London the following day. I'd been up to the site, in the meantime, and assessed the situation with the tenant. Within 24 hours we were the public face of it.”

The owner of the property bought the house more than 15 years earlier and rented it to the same tenant for a number of years. They have also expressed a desire to remain anonymous.

Adds the gallery CEO: “We had to have someone on the site to secure it because I knew instantly it's a race. What you get, first of all, is every grafitti artist in the area going down there wanting to put their mark on it so everyone can see it. So they go off and destroy it or tag it. So we were up against the clock.

“The owner of the property is quite artsy and she wanted to make sure the issues around domestic abuse or violence towards women, however you wish to interpret it, were amplified.”

To that end, domestic abuse charity Oasis, which started in Margate, was approached to get involved. It will, ultimately, receive a sizeable cash donation once the piece is sold.

Claire Williams, its CEO, explains: “That Banksy chose Margate where we started is quite incredible. His work shines a light on domestic abuse and the service we provide.”

Yet as that Valentine’s Day morning last year dawned, few could have envisaged the remarkable journey the piece would go on - or the disruption it would cause.

Specialist local builders were called in. An art conservator appointed. And the work on removing the piece - along with the wall it was painted on - began.

The tenant had to be moved out of her home for several months while scaffolding went up and the artwork shielded from public view. All paid for by the gallery.

“It was a massive building project,” explains Julian Usher. “It was an outside structural wall. When we looked into it, we realised it had three points of history. Originally it was a terraced house and that road was bombed in the war and the flats next door were built on the bit that was cleared away.

“So you've got Victorian brickwork up to about a foot and a half, then late 1940s, London stock brick and then something else from later repairs. It wasn’t in the greatest of shapes.

“It was agreed we would try and keep the piece local. But they definitely wanted it off their house.

“The options were they could have just whitewashed over it once the circus died down, but it was felt some good could come out of it as there is some commercial value to it if we can save it.”

The cost of the building work was around £200,000 - a cost the gallery took on.

The work has been valued at £6 million. It’s not a figure which is likely to be met given its sheer scale. Usher says Banksy values have been deflated by some 60% in recent years. A selling price of closer to £1.5m is thought to be more realistic.

“Anything,” he says, “is worth only what someone is prepared to pay for it.”

Agreeing to keep it on public display for a year, the gallery chiefs first approached bosses at Turner Contemporary. Surprisingly, perhaps, at first they weren’t interested - saying it should remain on the wall. Not long after, though, they changed their tune but admitted the sheer scale of the work meant it wouldn’t be possible. Instead, they suggested Dreamland.

So when the work was finally removed from the wall and the house returned to the tenants by the early summer of 2023, the Banksy was making its way the few hundred yards to the theme park when it was duly unveiled to the public near its rollerskating room.

Meanwhile, in the background, talks were under way with potential buyers. One of which agreed and signed a contract.

But in order to raise the deposit, it appointed a company called Showpiece to sell shares in the piece. For £120 anyone could buy one of a limited number of chunks in the Margate Banksy. Some 1,700 swiftly sold out.

“We agreed a contract,” says Julian Usher, “they had four months to pay a deposit and then eight months to settle in full. That deposit would help us recoup some of our costs.

“Unfortunately, four months came along and they didn't maintain their contract. We got some money out of them, but they paid up short.

“They also hadn't taken note of the fact that Dreamland shut for the winter. So all of a sudden, they have a piece they're trying to sell shares in that no one can see.”

So the contract was broken, the buyer no longer in the picture, but close to 2,000 people had bought a tiny chunk of the piece. It complicated things.

Julian Usher adds: “We have a right to buy back the shares in the contract, so we've gone through a process with Showpiece who administer the shares, and in the event of a sale, we’ve agreed to buy back the shares and agreed an uplift for them to say thank you. So everyone's happy.

“No one is going to buy it with 1,700 people owning a slice of it. It's hard enough to sell as it is.”

It’s understood to mean a £150 return for each shareholder.

So with that sale dead, instead the hulking great piece was transported on a flat-bed truck to the Art of Banksy exhibition in London’s Regent Street. But as it charged people to enter, it was agreed the piece would be in the reception area, allowing people to access that piece, at least, for free.

After being there for eight weeks it was being boxed up once again and heading to the Yamaha showroom in London - a company better known for their high-end musical instruments. But it had the space and a Banksy is a guaranteed crowd-puller.

Each trip takes around 10-hours - to box the work up and then painstakingly transport it. It’s not cheap either, with each journey costing thousands of pounds.

Yamaha had planned a number of charity events around the piece - raising funds for Oasis in the process.

It was when a press release was issued about its arrival, however, that Banksy’s Pest Control management company - which had previously ignored previous communications from the gallery boss - sprang to life.

“When this first event was about to kick off,” recalls Julian Usher, “they wrote to Yamaha and said if a charity was going to be assigned to a Banksy piece, they wanted to check it out to make sure it was bona fide and fitted in with their brand.

“They spoke to the charity. They don't give you a number to call - it's a case of, 'We'll call you from an undisclosed number when we're ready'.

“They spoke to Claire, the CEO of Oasis, and emailed Yamaha confirming they were happy.

“But they weren't happy with Yamaha writing a press release saying they were unveiling a Banksy. It was unveiled in Margate. So you can't use the word unveiling and we don't want an association with you. It all got a bit silly.”

Which brings us on to Pest Control and the very heart of the reason why, as you might imagine, the Valentine’s Day Mascara piece isn’t being sold at one of the UK’s major auction houses like Sothebys or Christies, which would attract buyers worldwide.

Explains author Will Ellsworth-Jones: “Pest Control was set up by Banksy. I am sure he is not involved in the day-to-day running of it but it is very much his organisation.

“If you buy a Banksy print, signed or unsigned, and want to make sure it is authentic you have to go to Pest Control for authentication. That is its main purpose and the big auction houses will not sell anything by Banksy whether it be a print or a wall without Pest Control authentication.

“In addition, Pest Control, under Bansky’s direction, will not give authentication to anything done in the street. His argument, which I happen to agree with, is that he painted it in the context of the street and to take it away from that context turns it into something different from the original.

“It is frustrating for dealers and would-be sellers because Banksy has painted on the wall, he has announced the fact on Instagram, but they still can’t get that certificate of authentication and that makes a huge difference to the value of the work.”

The big auction houses also don’t want to jeopardise their relationship with the artist when it comes to pushing those official pieces out into the market.

Which has applied an added layer of complication to selling the Margate work.

Explains Julian Usher: “We had a French guy who was going to pay the right amount of money, it was going to go into a private collection, he would probably donate it to a museum in France for a period of time, but he ticked all the other boxes.

“We had all the evidence - even an email from Pest Control to Yamaha stating all you can say say is it's a Banksy he produced in Margate. Quite frankly, what more does a certificate of authenticity say?

“All he wanted was for Pest Control to send him that email directly - just saying it won't issue a certificate but we can confirm its the Banksy from Margate. The charity would have been paid, but they refused.

“Pest Control run a very tight ship. It's a nice certificate, it's got half a Princess Diana note [from the ‘Banksy of England’ and looks like a tenner] and they retain the other half with the serial numbers, there's a coffee stain on it, there's a picture of a rat - it's all a bit of theatre.

“Some people actually frame them and put them on the wall as well - although best not to have them too close to the painting because if you lose both you're in trouble.”

But the Margate one will, as it stands, never get one.

“In part,” elaborates Will Ellsworth-Jones, “this is because to authenticate a piece on the street is, as Banksy says, ‘basically a signed confession on headed notepaper’. But in addition, his argument is that he has created this art to be seen and indeed enjoyed in context and he is not going to give any help to anyone who wants to make money out of it or, indeed, just wants to preserve it.”

Meanwhile, Yamaha wanted their space back after having the work for most of the year, so Valentine’s Day Mascara moved again - this time to the Yield Gallery in the capital where it went on display in September.

All the while, a buyer was still being sought. As yet, no one has signed on the dotted line. But, says the Red Eight Gallery boss, he’s confident it will finally be acquired by a new owner early in 2025.

Is he suprised a work by one of the most famous contemporary artists has proven so difficult to shift?

“No, I’m not,” he says, “partly because it is a very big piece. It's really an exhibition piece - a museum piece. Although we are getting interest from them, museums don't have much money.”

Museums who have had conversations about the piece are believed to include those in the US and Middle East. The Margate Banksy may end up a very long way from home.

The gallery boss adds: “If it's going to a private individual, it can't even go to someone with a nice big house and is wealthy because it's not the sort of thing you can hang on the wall. This would take up someone's room.

“There was someone in the States who enquired - they were having a new house built and were thinking of incorporating it so it became a permanent fixture within their house, but facing inwards and become part of their kitchen.

“That never came to fruition.

“But they are difficult to sell. It's also a difficult global economic marketplace. It's the sort of thing a Russian oligarch would buy and that would be your go-to marketplace - but that's not there anymore.

“It's never going to achieve £6 million in this marketplace,” he admits. “I believe it will surpass £6 millon in the future.

“If you look at the auction prices for his artwork, it was very overheated - stuff was selling for £60,000 for limited edition prints and are now achieving £10,000.

“The art market has come down 40% over recent years. At the end of the day, art is a luxury asset and everyone is being hit in the pocket around the world.”

In the meantime, there’s a huge part of a Margate end-of-terrace house to store.

Which has, finally, seen it make a triumphant return to the town at The Wonderworks - formerly the Hornby Visitor Centre in Margate.

It is there for the next three months but, depending on negotiations with buyers, could be there longer. They may, for example, opt to buy it but keep it on display at The Wonderworks for a period of time.

“It needs to stand still somewhere,” Julian Usher adds. “The hope is Margate, but we have no obligation.

“We said we'd have it on public display for at least 12 months and we have done that. And most of the time it has been in Margate. We've done everything we can to keep people happy.

“Whoever buys it, they're only ever the custodian. At one point they'll sell it on to someone else, donate it to a museum and the piece will ultimately move.

“But the story around it, where it's from and the story it pushes out will live on and survive in the future.

“It's a poisoned chalice in some respects and Banksy is sitting there, with his feet up laughing.

“It's been an up and down journey, but I'm proud of what we've achieved. It would have been a lot easier if Pest Control would have helped.”

Of course, Banksy himself, revels in his anonymity. The reason he uses stencils in his public art is designed to allow him to come and go at speed.

It’s easy to find online best guess identities, but, let’s be honest, it’s more fun and, frankly, more artisitic, to not know for certain. What we do know, however, is that he - and most likely his team of trusted confidantes - were in Margate on February 13, 2023. No-one appeared to spot him.

When we approached Pest Control to comment on this story, they would only send an automated response saying that “a reply may not be forthcoming”. And so it proved.