They say that for every winner, there has to be a loser. On one side of the coin, we have the discovery of a £40,000 table in a skip and, on the other, we have Chris Evans accidentally throwing out some very valuable artwork. Sorry, Chris, but on this occasion you’re definitely a loser.
The Radio Two DJ was packing his art collection into boxes during a recent house move when the terrible error occurred. He had decided to throw out some of his paintings, so put them in separate boxes, intended to go to a local charity shop.
However, Evans said that his ‘handy man’ had made a mix up with the boxes which led to the Damien Hirst painting being discarded.
He now believes that the work – one of Hirst’s classic dot paintings – is lying in a charity shop somewhere waiting to be snapped up at a bargain price. A similar painting by Hirst was sold at auction for £240,000 last year!
Chris Evans, 42, said “I had no idea I'd done it. We've been clearing out the house.”
He also said that he’d made a hurried effort to trace the whereabouts of the painting and buy it back. He didn’t seem to be too bothered about the whole episode, though, as he told the story in fits of laughter on his drive-time radio show.
It’s certainly not the first time art has been mistakenly discarded – last year a sculpture by Turner Prize artist, Anish Kapoor, valued at £350,000, was shockingly dumped in a skip by builders whilst in the care of a London fine arts storage company!
A piece of ‘art’ masquerading as a bag of rubbish was also thrown into a hire skip by a cleaner at The Tate Gallery a few years back.
The lost Hirst painting is now thought to be in a charity shop somewhere in Cranleigh or Godalming, Surrey. So if you’re feeling lucky it might just be worth a browse…
