clipped from www.theage.com.au

Could laneway graffiti be worth more than your average house?

Andrew McDonald, director of the Citylights public art project, with British graffiti artist Banksy's "little diver".
Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones

IT'S barely a metre tall, and most of the time hides behind a wheelie bin in a narrow Melbourne laneway — a faceless grey figure in an old-fashioned diving mask and duffel coat.

But as one of Melbourne's few remaining pieces of stencil art by the elusive British graffiti artist Banksy, the little diver gained further cachet yesterday when another Banksy work on a London wall fetched £208,000 ($A453,700) on an eBay auction.

Banksy's diver adorns the rear of the Nicholas Building on the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane. The 10-storey building, built in 1926, was placed on the State Heritage Register last October, although the listing owed more to its architectural features such as the ground-floor Cathedral Arcade than the Banksy artwork.