CONCERN is growing about the fate of three original early Banksy artworks at the defunct Arches club and arts venue.
He was a little known street artist when he created the collection for an exhibition at the Glasgow venue in 2002.
However, his work now sells for hundreds of thousands of pounds,
The complex went into administration in June after being left £500,000 in debt following the city council's decision to impose a midnight curfew on the nightclub.
Two of the Banksy drawings are inside the former nightclub on an arch-shaped dividing wall which leads into the venue’s toilets.
The third artwork is outside the venue on Midland Street. This small drawing of a gun-toting monkey has been power-hosed in the past and is only just visible.
The original artworks inside The Arches presented a Mona Lisa with her head surrounded by a picture frame. By her side, the gun-toting monkey was reprised. This time its head was also ‘framed’ and it sported a ballet tutu.
In between the Mona Lisa and the monkey, Banksy daubed in red paint: “Every time I hear the word culture I release the safety in my 9mm.”
All that is left of the work is the slightly contorted face of the Mona Lisa and a pair of monkey legs clad in a pink tutu. Both are in a bad state of repair, having been partially painted over with grey emulsion paint a year after the exhibition.
One former employee said The Arches was trying to attract corporate events and its management at the time felt the Banksy work did not give the right impression.
Last month the contents of the venue were sold off at auction and now the space is empty – apart from the Banksy drawings.
According to Nick King, a spokeman for the building's owners, Network Rail, there are no plans to remove the art work or to repair it.
He said: “The quote which The Arches management got last year to repair the Banksy work was £20,000. They really are not in the best condition.
“Network Rail is not looking at doing anything with them. Our main focus is that we now have a building to occupy.”
Gavin Strang, managing director of auction house, Lyon & Turnbull, which specialises in valuing art, said: “In their current state, they’re really not worth that much. It’s really sad to think that they were painted over with very little thought. Who knows what they would have been worth had they been kept in their original state?”
A youth club in Bristol was last year offered £1m for a Banksy mural on its wall. It eventually sold for £400,000, safeguarding the club's future.
Actor Tam Dean Burn said: "This is yet another example of the tragedy that is the Arches closure. So many great artists from so many spheres brought their creativity to the legendary venue.
“I'm glad it looks like they can't sell off these Banksys in their squalid liquidation sale. The Arches were never about making money except as the means to make more work and that unique model is gone.”
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