Banksy's Love is in the Bin sells for record £16m

A Banksy artwork which shredded itself at a previous auction has fetched a record £16 million.

Love is in the Bin was what remained of the anonymous artist's live destruction of his piece Girl with Balloon, which sold for £1m in 2018.

It went under the hammer at Sotheby's in London again on Thursday - selling vastly over its £4-6m guide price.

After closing bidding auctioneer Oliver Barker joked he was relieved that it was "still there".

In keeping with his irreverent guerrilla style, Love is in the Bin saw Banksy poke fun at the art world.

Sotheby's contemporary art chairman Alex Branczik said the stunt "did not so much destroy an artwork by shredding it, but instead created one".

"Today, this piece is considered heir to a venerated legacy of anti-establishment art," he added, labelling it as "the ultimate Banksy artwork and a true icon of recent art history".

Back in 2018, moments after the hammer fell at the auction, alarms sounded and the canvas dropped through a hidden shredder built into the bottom.

The unnamed European woman who bought the piece said: "At first I was shocked, but I realised I would end up with my own piece of art history."

Former BBC arts editor Will Gompertz wrote at the time that he believed Love is in the Bin would go on to be seen as "one of the most significant artworks of the early 21st Century".

"It is not a great painting that can be compared to a late Rembrandt, or a sculpture to sit alongside Michelangelo's David, but in terms of conceptual art emanating from [Marcel] Duchamp's Dadaist sensibility, it is exceptional," he added.

"It was brilliant in both conception and execution."

"What is Love is in the Bin?" he asked. "Is it a painting? Or, is it now a piece of conceptual art? Or should it be classified as a sculpture? Or is it rubbish?

"Who decides? Who knows? Duchamp would say it is up to you to decide."

The piece had been on permanent loan to the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart museum in Germany since March 2019.