“Next week the four people charged with pulling down Colston’s statue in Bristol are going on trial. I’ve made some souvenir shirts to mark the occasion. Available today 11th December from various outlets in the city (all proceeds to the defendants so they can go for a pint). One per person, £25 each plus VAT. Details on the Ujima Radio breakfast show from 9am.”
Photograph: @banksy on Instagram
A few hours later, the first Colston tees started popping up on eBay at £ 1,250 apiece. At 4 PM, Banksy’s PR woman Jo Brooks communicated: “Banksy t-shirt drops in Bristol have now sold out.”
The donation was made public on December 4 at an exhibition curated by Grayson Perry at Bristol Museum. Banksy contributed the original stencil to the piece he did on the wall of the Reading GAOL prison in March 2021. The idea is that the Reading Council now sells the stencil and uses the proceeds to turn the derelict prison into a permanent art centre. It’s expected to fetch up to GBP 10 million in a private sale. In Banksy’s own words:
“I had very little interest in Reading until I was on a rail replacement bus service that went past the jail. It’s rare to find an uninterrupted 500m-long paintable surface slap bang in the middle of a town; I literally clambered over the passenger next to me to get a closer look. I promised myself I’d paint the wall even before I knew what it was. I’m passionate about it now, though. Oscar Wilde is the patron saint of smashing two contrasting ideas together to create magic. Converting the place that destroyed him into a refuge for art feels so perfect we have to do it.”
The Oscar Wilde stencil on display at Bristol Museum.
“We can confirm that the artwork at the end of The Outlaws was an original Banksy, and that Christopher Walken painted over that artwork during the filming of this scene, ultimately destroying it,” a spokesperson for the BBC said. The show is written and directed by Bristolian comedian Stephen Merchant and is filmed in Bristol.
From BBC’s website:
“The Outlaws, written and directed by Stephen Merchant, stars Hollywood veteran Walken as one of a group of minor criminals refurbishing a building for their community service. The last episode sees his character uncover the Banksy rat and two spray cans behind some wooden boards, and ask his supervisor if he should paint over it. The probation officer is looking the other way so doesn’t realise it’s a Banksy and tells him all graffiti must be painted over, which he does.” https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-59236187
There had been some buzz before the piece appeared on the Banksy website http://www.banksy.co.uk on 10 December around 17h. A few hours later, it was published on the official Instagram account @banksy.
The Guardian commented the artwork a few hours later:
The owners of a house in Bristol have apparently pulled out of the sale of the property after a Banksy piece appeared on the wall. On Thursday, the anonymous street artist confirmed he was behind the artwork showing an older woman sneezing out her false teeth, which has appeared on a semi-detached house in steep Vale Street, Totterdown. The stencil mural, Aachoo!!”, had been covered up before its unveiling on Thursday morning. It shows a woman in a headscarf holding a handkerchief but dropping her walking stick and handbag as she loses her dentures while sneezing.
Vale Street is England’s steepest residential street – its 22-degree slope used during annual Easter Sunday egg-rolling competitions. ITV News West Country spoke to the owners of the house, which had a sold sign up outside, and were told they have pulled out of the sale. They were due to exchange contracts next week but the artwork could see the value of their house rocket.
Nicholas Makin, whose mother Aileen owns the property, said people had been climbing over the house to get a better look at the new piece. He told ITV News West Country that his mother was distressed by the attention and they will take time to consider what to do next.
Fred Loosmore, 28, a furniture maker who until recently rented a room in the house, told the PA Media news agency he had put a clear covering over it for protection. “We wanted to come up because people will deface it, and luckily we’ve got a workshop and a massive piece of acrylic we’ve got left over,” he said.
“When we lived here so many people would come, especially on bikes and stuff because they were trying to do the challenge up the hills. It’s a great spot. The artwork is so nice. It’s so relevant, isn’t it?”
“What should we do with the empty plinth in the middle of Bristol? Here’s an idea that caters for both those who miss the Colston statue and those who don’t. We drag him out the water, put him back on the plinth, tie cable round his neck and commission some life size bronze statues of protestors in the act of pulling him down. Everyone happy. A famous day commemorated.”
Banksy went back to his origins in Barton Hill for Valentine’s Day. And the girl with the red balloon is also back, but this time with a slingshot in her hand.
Photograph: Banksy’s Instagram
A few days later, Banksy published the sketches:
In his own words:
“I’m kind of glad the piece in Barton Hill got vandalised. The initial sketch was a lot better..”
The T-shirts are only available for sale at an event in Bristol on 12 December. All of the proceeds go to four different homeless charities.
Banksy has collaborated with several NGOs over the years. One of them is, of course, the @lovewelcomes project, which among other things, made the coveted “Welcome Mat”, sold at the Gross Domestic Product.
Devolved Parliament was originally exhibited at the Banksy vs. Bristol Museum in the summer of 2009. The show attracted over 300,000 visitors and was the most visited art exhibition in the UK that year.
The piece is one of Banksy’s largest oil paintings, measuring 4 metres by 2.5 metres. The artwork will be displayed again at Bristol Museum for 6 months, from 28 March to 1 September 2019.
Dismaland was a temporary art project organised and financed by Banksy, constructed in the seaside resort town of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, England. Prepared in secret, the pop-up exhibition at the Tropicana, a disused lido, was “a sinister twist on Disneyland” that opened during the weekend of 21 August 2015 and closed permanently on 27 September 2015, 36 days later. Banksy described it as a “family theme park unsuitable for children.” 4,000 tickets were available for purchase per day, priced at £3 each.
The show featured 58 artists from the 60 Banksy initially invited to participate. The list included Damien Hirst, Jenny Holzer, Jimmy Cauty, Tracy Emin, Jeff Gillette, David Shrigley, Paco Pomet, Escif, Peter Kennard, and many more.
Banksy created approximately 15 new works for Dismaland:
Grim Reaper at Dismaland
Some of Banksy’s pieces at Dismaland. Photos: R.A.
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The official Dismaland trailer:
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The Dismaland Programme
Maybe the best way to get an understanding of Dismaland without having been there is through the official programme. You can download it here:
List of artists at Dismaland in order of appearance in the programme:
Bill Barminski. California, 1962. ‘The cardboard security room’
Ben Long. UK, 1978. ‘The cornice ice cream’
Stephen Powers. USA, 1968.
Jenny Holzer. Ohio, 1950.
Caitlin Cherry. Chicago, 1987.
Caroline McCarthy. Ireland, 1971.
Banksy. UK, 197?
Dietrich Wegner. Australia. ‘The mushroom cloud’ and the ‘Baby in the vending machine’
Andreas Hykade. Germany, 1968.
James Joyce. UK.
Brock Davis. USA. The Broccoli painting
Josh Keyes. USA, 1969. ‘The great white shark’
Leigh Mulley. UK. Balloons
Jani Leinonen. Finland, 1978. ‘Modified cereal boxes’
Barry Reigate. UK, 1971.
Jeff Gilette. California, 1979. Conceptual inspiration for Dismaland.
Lee Madgwick. UK. The rural solitary house with Internet access
Paco Pomet. Spain, 1970. ‘Once upon a time’, ‘Internacional’ and ‘Bloody Trees’
Laura Lancaster. UK, 1979.
Zaria Forman. USA, 1982.
Jessica Harrison. UK, 1982. Small porcelain figures.
Kate MacDowell. USA. The hare wearing a gasmask
Maskull Laserre. Canada, 1978. Janus – the wooden carousel horse.
Severija Inčirauskaitė. Lithuania, 1977.
Amir Schiby. Israel. The four palestininan boys in Gaza.
Sami Musa. Palestina.
Neta Harari Navon. Israel, 1970.
Huda Beydoun. Saudi Arabia, 1988.
ESCIF. Spain, 1980.
LU$H. Australia
Axel Void (Alejandro Hugo Dorda Mevs). USA.
Jimmy Cauty. UK, 1956. ADP – the miniature urban landscape
Tim Hunkin & Andy Plant. UK. ‘The Astronauts Caravan’
Block 9. UK. ‘The Fairytale Castle’
David Shrigley. UK. The ‘I am an imbecille’ balloons
Scott Hove. USA.
Ronit Baranga. Israel.
Dorcas Casey. UK. The horses in the Cinderella castle
Polly Morgan. UK. Taxidermist animals
Damien Hirst. UK, 1965. ‘the Unicorn’
Mike Ross. USA. ‘Big Rig Jig’
Michael Beitz. USA.
Peter Kennard & Cat Phillips. The David Cameron Billboard
Wasted Rita. Portugal, 1978. Written messages on big Post-Its.
Paul Insect & Bäst. UK and USA.
Greg Haberny. USA, 1975.
Nettie Wakefield. UK, 1987.
Darren Cullen. UK, 1983. The Pocket Money Loan installation
Tinsel Edwards, UK
Ed Hall, UK. The banners
Dr Gavin Grindon. UK. Museum of Cruel Objects
Joanna Pollonais, Canada.
Suliman Mansour. Palestina.
Tammam Azzam. Syria, 1980.
Shadi Al Zaqzouq. Libya, 1989.
El Teneen. Egypt
Mana Neyestani. Iran.
Fares Cachoux. Syria.
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Dismaland Reviews
The Guardian published a surprisingly negative review of Dismaland on 21 August 2015:
In Dismaland, Banksy has created something truly depressing
By Jonathan Jones
The artist’s ‘Bemusement Park’ claims to be making you think, but as an actual experience it is thin, threadbare and, to be honest, quite boring
This place is unreal. A dilapidated pub, desperate-looking big wheel and grim promenade perfectly express the melancholy of the British seaside. But that’s just Weston-super-Mare on a cloudy morning. Dismaland is even stranger. Or so I hope, as I join the very first visitors to Banksy’s “Bemusement Park” waiting to see what lies behind a miserably gothic sign on the battered facade of a decaying lido.
People have been waiting for hours in a queue that stretches far along the prom. A thousand free tickets have been given away to Weston-super-Mare residents for this first public day. All ages and subcultures, from punks to a man dressed entirely in union jacks, are waiting to have their bags searched.
There are two layers of security as we pour in: real and fake. The fake security is one of the funniest moments of the day. Created by Californian artist Bill Barminski, it consists of cardboard X-ray machines and tables of cardboard objects supposedly taken from visitors. But this joke about modern security systems does not change the fact that before you enter Dismaland you do actually get your bag thoroughly inspected by very real security guards who asked one visitor if he had any knives or, get this, spray cans. All graffiti in Dismaland is official graffiti.
You can see why Banksy needs to control spontaneous art. Already the streets between the railway station and his attraction have been enlivened by rival street artists. Banksy. He’s so famous that Weston-super-Mare’s lucky golden ticket holders rush into the park already taking pictures, and I too am caught up in the thrill. This has been in the Daily Mail and everything, it’s got to be special.
Greeters – or rather, sulkers – wear Mickey Mouse ears and T-shirts that say DISMAL. Instead of being forced to smile all day they have to grimace all day. Some are so good at it they appear genuinely pissed off. It’s infectious, for me at least.
As cameraphones snap everything in sight, the gloom of the British seaside at its most dilapidated and moribund wells up in me. Memories of amusement arcades in Rhyl. Banksy has created something truly depressing. There at the heart of Dismaland is the fairytale castle, ruinous and rancid. The lake around it has a fountain that is a police water cannon. But an empty feeling is starting to hollow me out. Where’s the fun I was promised? Well, I wasn’t promised any fun, just dismalness. But surely not this dismal.
Inside the festering wreck of a fairytale castle, Cinderella’s coach has crashed. Flash bulbs create indoor lightning as paparazzi photograph her. Shock! It’s like the death of Diana. But there’s no emotion. The lifesize tableau, by Banksy himself, is just one big smirk. Wait. He’s built a castle. He leads us into it … For this? It’s such a trite, simplistic joke.
Dismaland is not all crap jokey installations, however. There are political one-liners here as well as artistic ones. People are queuing up to go inside a caravan with intense displays about the evil of our fascist police state. There is also a huge model of said fascist police state, with tiny police cars everywhere, blue lights flashing right across a diorama of a city at night.
The irony of the security on the way into Dismaland is underlined by all the references to CCTV and the wicked security establishment that pervade it. Yet that obvious double standard goes much deeper. Dismaland is a kind of consummation, for me, of all that is false about Banksy. It claims to be “making you think” and above all to be defying the consumer society, the leisure society, the commodification of the spectacle. Disneyland packages dreams, Dismaland is a blast of reality. But it is just a media phenomenon, something that looks much better in photos than it feels to be here. “Being here” is itself just a way of touching the magic of Banksy’s celebrity – that’s why everyone is taking pictures. This is somewhere to come to say you went. As an actual experience it is thin and threadbare, and I found, to be honest, quite boring.
I felt I was participating in a charade where everyone has to pretend this is a better joke than it is. In reality the crazy fairgrounds and dance tents at rock festivals are far more subversive – because they are joyous.
Perhaps you need intoxicants to enjoy Dismaland, and I was there at 11 in the morning. But its failure to create joy is self-defeating. Funfairs really are strange, wild places, as film-makers have known since Tod Browning made Freaks and rock music has known since the Doors recorded Strange Days. But in Dismaland, the rather well established idea that fairs are bizarre is not taken anywhere new or interesting.
As a news story, a media sensation, it works wonderfully – but up close, this is a Potemkin theme park. It’s not an experience, just a pasteboard substitute for one. Indeed, it is a mere art exhibition. Dismaland does not offer the energy and danger that real theme parks do. Instead, it brings together a lot of bad art by the seaside.
Banksy shows a painting of a mother and child about to be overwhelmed by a tsunami. The grotesquely clumsy crudeness of his painting technique up close, and without any excuse that he did it quickly to evade the cops, is embarrassing. But nastiest of all is the work’s peculiar lack of human feeling. We are – apparently – meant to think it’s funny that the wave is about to kill these beachgoers. They have lots of commodities, you see – sun cream and stuff. All the detritus of consumer capitalism. See the wave of the future crush them! This heartless allegory is worthy of Maoist propaganda. As art it is sterile and dead.
Banksy does better with a figure of Death riding a dodgem. This would be a lot of fun if you could go on the dodgems and try to dodge death. Sadly you just have to watch. It elicits a half laugh.
At least a visit to Dismaland is a real, sustained chance to assess Banksy as an artist. His one-dimensional jokes and polemics lack any poetic feeling. Devoid of ambiguity or mystery, everything he has created here is inert and unengaging. Cinderalla dies and no one gives a toss. What a good joke about our time, that one of the most famous critics of the way we live now is nothing more than a media-savvy cultural entrepreneur.
Banksy’s taste in other artists is no more insightful. Most of the artists he’s selected for this seaside outing are as one-dimensional as his own visions.
Only one image held me. It has been a long time since I was thrilled to see a Damien Hirst but among all the half-baked efforts here, Hirst’s gold-framed vitrine containing a unicorn has a true strangeness. It is not preachy or self righteous. Nor is its fascination easily explained. It is a real fairground attraction, freakish and bizarre. Dismaland needs a few more unicorns. So does Weston-super-Mare. So do we all.
After moving to London in late 1999, Banksy returned to Bristol in February 2000 to open his first regular exhibition at the restaurant Severnshed, behind the docks. The show was a mixture of stencils and acrylic on canvas. All pieces were priced under £1,000. There were several remarkable pieces: Simple Intelligence Testing, Sharks, and You Told That Joke Twice.
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BBC Bristol did an interview with Banksy at the exhibition. It can be heard here:
Banksy unofficial 