Banksy exhibition

[RSV]

Graffiti artist Banksy has pulled off an audacious stunt amid tight secrecy to stage his biggest ever exhibition.
A burned-out ice-cream van is among 100 works Banksy has installed at Bristol's museum, replacing many of the museum's regular artefacts.
The reason the museum was closed was kept secret from top council officials.
Banksy said: "This is the first show I've ever done where taxpayers' money is being used to hang my pictures up rather than scrape them off."
Staged in the council-owned City Museum and Art Gallery, Banksy v Bristol Museum features animatronics, installations and a sensory display.



In pictures: Banksy exhibition

"This show is my vision of the future, to which many people will say: 'You should have gone to Specsavers'", Banksy added.
The exhibition and its location have been a closely-guarded secret since October, with just a couple of museum officials in the loop.
"I think we may have dragged them down to our level rather than being elevated to theirs," said Banksy of the subterfuge involved in staging the show in his home city.
'Megastar'
Museum director Kate Brindley said it was a huge relief to finally be able to talk about the exhibition, and admitted they had taken a "risk".
Plans for the summer show were kept from Bristol City Council chiefs until Friday - the day before it was due to open.
THAT WAS SOME SECRET!
Jon Kay, West of England correspondent
Whatever you think of Banksy, his art and his stunts, what he's done here is pretty extraordinary.

Normally this grand building is home to artefacts and paintings remembering Bristol's maritime history, but today the Edwardian halls are filled with Banksy's unique blend of anger and humour. All this - and hardly anybody knew about it.

Exactly WHO Banksy is remains shrouded in mystery - we do know he grew up in Bristol, and this free exhibition is said to be his way of thanking and rewarding the city.

Many people are proud of him - he's become one of Bristol's most famous (and notorious) sons - others are bound to question whether a guy who spent his youth spray-painting walls deserves to be given this platform.

Either way, you've got to hand it to him - he's done it again!

Bristol has had a love-hate relationship with Banksy since he started stencilling on the city's walls in the 1990s. There is likely to be criticism of the decision to stage an official expo of his work.
"We ran a bit of a risk," said Ms Brindley, "but we knew that it was just the right thing for the city.
"Equally there's so many people in Bristol who just love Banksy, and internationally. He's a megastar.
"We're a gallery that wants to work with contemporary artists - he's our home-grown hero."
The artist himself was involved in setting up the exhibits and came to the museum to oversee its installation, but staff were unaware who he was among the crew setting up the show.
Although Bristol has seen work by Banksy adorn the city's walls, this is his first official indoor exhibition in the city since 2000.
That show was held at the Severnshed restaurant on the waterfront and featured several paintings which have since gone on to sell for thousands of pounds at auction.
Banksy has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles and Bethlehem.


He became famous after a series of "guerrilla" stunts which saw him paint the West Bank barrier and put an inflatable figure of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner at Disney World.
It was Bristol where he first made his mark though, with a series of graffiti paintings on iconic local buildings such as the city council headquarters, an M32 bridge and the Thekla floating nightclub.
His work has since become highly collectable, and has attracted buyers including Brad Pitt and Robbie Williams.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...re/8094839.stm

Think i might check this out this weekend if i got time

[BertRoot]

Yawn, not much talent there IMO.

[RSV]

Yawn, not much talent there IMO.

Dont like Banksy's work? I think it's pretty good and best of all the exhibition is free lol

[c0axial]

Love Banksy.... and with Canvas Town Prints... Cool

[flanflinger]

would like to see his work myself we have a good piece here in liverpool of a rat with a marker scribbling on a building on the corner of berry st and duke st..

[super mike]

I fail to see why this vandal gets all this praise

[flanflinger]

ha ha ha ha ha class!

[burner1]

He used to put up some interesting stuff but seeing as a lot of his recent stuff goes for silly money and I don't personally 'get it' as serious money worthy, I think he's selling out (Why not though, if it makes him rich).

Too many people who have a lot of money simply buy this sort of thing as an investment (in their eyes) rather than any real worth as a talented art piece.

It reminds me of piss take a news programme pulled off years ago when they got a load of toddlers to doodle on canvas with paint and they put them in an abstract art exhibition... it was fucking hilarious hearing all these snobs interpreting what they 'saw' in the picture as brilliant

[WalterPill]

Charlie Brooker nails it regarding Banksy here:

Here's a mystery for you. Renegade urban graffiti artist Banksy is clearly a guffhead of massive proportions, yet he's often feted as a genius straddling the bleeding edge of now. Why? Because his work looks dazzlingly clever to idiots. And apparently that'll do.Banksy first became famous for his stencilled subversions of pop-culture images; one showed John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson in a famous pose from Pulp Fiction, with their guns replaced by bananas. What did it mean? Something to do with the glamourisation of violence, yeah? Never mind. It looked cool. Most importantly, it was accompanied by the name "BANKSY" in huge letters, so everyone knew who'd done it. This, of course, is the real message behind all of Banksy's work, despite any appearances to the contrary.
Take his political stuff. One featured that Vietnamese girl who had her clothes napalmed off. Ho-hum, a familiar image, you think. I'll just be on my way to my 9 to 5 desk job, mindless drone that I am. Then, with an astonished lurch, you notice sly, subversive genius Banksy has stencilled Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald either side of her.
Wham! The message hits you like a lead bus: America ... um ... war ... er ... Disney ... and stuff. Wow. In an instant, your worldview changes forever. Your eyes are opened. Staggering away, mind blown, you flick v-signs at a Burger King on the way home. Nice one Banksy! You've shown us the truth, yeah?
As if that wasn't irritating enough, Banksy's vague, pseudo-subversive preaching is often accompanied by a downright embarrassing hardnut swagger. His website is full of advice to other would-be graffiti bores, like: "be aware that going on a mission drunk out of your head will result in some truly spectacular artwork and at least one night in the cells". Woah, man - the cells!
He goes on to explain that "real villains" think graffiti is pointless - not because he wants you to agree with them, but because he wants you to know he's mates with a few tough-guy criminal types. Coz Banksy's an anarchalist what don't respect no law, innit?
One of his most imbecilic daubings depicts a monkey wearing a sandwich board with "lying to the police is never wrong" written on it. So presumably Ian Huntley was right then, Banksy? You absolute thundering backside.
Recently, our hero's made headlines by sneaking a dummy dressed in Guantánamo rags into Disneyland (once again fearlessly exposing Mickey Mouse's disgusting war criminal past), and defacing several hundred copies of Paris Hilton's new album (I haven't heard her CD, but I'm willing to bet it's far superior to Blur's godawful Think Tank, a useless bumdrizzle of an album, whose artwork was done by Banksy - presumably he spray-painted it on a brick and hurled it through EMI's window, yeah?).
Right now you can see some of Banksy's life-altering acts of genius for yourself at his LA exhibition Barely Legal (yeah? Yeah!), including a live elephant painted to blend in with some gaudy wallpaper. This apparently represents "the big issues some people choose to ignore" - ie pretty much anything from global poverty to Aids. But not, presumably, the fat-arsed, berk-pleasing rubbishness of Banksy. We're all keeping schtum about that one.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...rts.visualarts

[flanflinger]

Bit of a bias view there from the guardian, wouldnt expect anything less.... lol they big him up in the sunday sport

[Fett]

I used to like his work but I wasnt impressed by his Disney stunt. Parents having to explain atrocities of the world to their seven year old kids whilst on holiday is not my idea of a good protest stunt. If he feels the need to protest in such a controversial manner then perhaps he should suffer for his art and indulge in self-immolation. No doubt there would be someone willing to pay millions to see for this, for investment purposes of course.