‘Girl with Balloon’ (also, ‘Balloon Girl’ or ‘Girl and Balloon’) is a series of stencil murals around London by the graffiti artist Banksy, started in 2002. They depict a young girl with her hand extended toward a red heart-shaped balloon carried away by the wind. The locations for this work include street murals in Shoreditch and the Southbank in London on the Waterloo Bridge and other murals around London, though none remain there.

Banksy has several times used variants of this design to support social campaigns: in 2005 about the West Bank barrier, in 2014 about the Syrian refugee crisis, and also about the 2017 UK election. A 2017 Samsung poll ranked ‘Girl with Balloon’ as the United Kingdom’s number one favourite artwork.

In 2018, a framed copy of the work got spontaneously shredded during an auction, by way of a mechanical device Banksy had hidden in the frame. Banksy confirmed that he was responsible for the shredding and gave the altered piece a new name, ‘Love is in the Bin’. Sotheby’s said it was “the first work in history ever created during a live auction.”

The locations for this work include Waterloo Bridge and other sites around London, though none remain. A 2004 version of the mural was at an east London shop in Shoreditch, sold in 2007 for £37,200 at Sotheby’s, and was removed by the Sincura Group in 2014 and sold for £500,000 in September 19, 2015.

In July 2017, a Samsung poll of 2,000 people from the United Kingdom asked participants to rank twenty pieces of British art. The poll’s results listed ‘Balloon Girl’ as the people’s number one favourite artwork.