Exhibitions

List of Banksy’s official exhibitions:

The important exhibitions (marked in capital letters in the list above) have been located at:

  • 3 in the Bristol area: Severnshed, Banksy vs. Bristol Museum, and Dismaland
  • 3 in the London area: Turf War, Crude Oils, and GDP
  • 2 in New York: The Charcoal Grill and Better Out than In (BOTI)
  • 1 in Los Angeles: Barely Legal
  • 1 in Palestine: Walled Off Hotel
  • 1 in Scotland: Cut & Run

We can observe that the periodicity is approximately every two years. There is a jump between 2009 and 2013, which can be explained by the production of the film Exit through the Gift Shop, which was released in 2010.

What else can be said about Banksy’s art shows? They are not conventional exhibitions of paintings and sculptures in a gallery or museum.

Groundbreaking: Thinking big from the beginning 

He did a few smaller warm-up shows in Europe before Turf War in the summer of 2003, his first big exhibition in London. Turf War was announced a few days before it opened and was a mixture of paintings, sculptures, installations, live animals, crashed cars, etc. Underground artists had done similar exhibitions in derelict warehouses since the late 1950s, but Banksy took the underground expression to another level: more professional, better organised, and with a huge amount of self-irony directed at the same underground movement he came from.

After Turf War, the keywords for his art shows have been unexpected and groundbreaking. Crude Oils in 2005 was Banksy’s caricature of 20 masterworks by Monet, Van Gogh, Warhol, et al. A year later, he did Barely Legal in Los Angeles, a bigger and slightly Americanized version of Turf War. In the fall of 2008, he did a small, extraordinary exhibition in New York, exclusively with animatronics. In the summer of 2009, he took over Bristol Museum Banksy and filled it with his own oil paintings, sculptures, and installations. To call it a massive effort is a huge understatement. He never repeats the same winning concept; he is always a risk-taker, exploring new ways to exhibit. Four years later, he organised Better Out Than In, a month-long residency on the streets of New York. Two years later, Dismaland was another completely different and unexpected art show. And on the same note, who could have expected the Walled Off Hotel in 2017 or GDP in 2019?

Contradictions

A special mention goes to the collective exhibition Dismaland, organised by Banksy in August 2015. Although Banksy only contributed approximately 15 pieces, one can say that the whole project was a piece of art in itself. And it had one key element, the contradiction: the sad bemusement park, a helpdesk closed to the public. Everything at Dismaland was the other way around. The Hawaiian music at full volume was played in “minor” and at varying speeds. 

The contradictions have been constant in the imagery: the girl hugging a bomb instead of a teddybear, the street fighter throwing a bouquet instead of a molotov cocktail, the copper giving you the finger, Christ with shopping bags, and Virgin Mary feeding her baby with venom. The contradictions have also been part of the overall narrative: Anonymous but seeking the spotlight constantly. An icon for the alternative yet one of the best-paid painters in the UK. A high-voltage political figure claiming social justice and transparency is at the same time an incarnation of opacity. A constant provocateur of the art establishment, but at the same time selling his studio pieces directly to VIP collectors and hitting “all-time highs” at top auction houses. The contradictions and double entendres are not only essential in his paintings, but they are also the essence of the Banksy phenomenon.

Teamwork

It’s undeniable that there is a production team involved in producing the artwork and the art shows and mounting them “on-site.” Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and other big-thinking artists also have production teams; nothing strange with that. What’s unique about Banksy’s production team is that no one on his team has gone public.

In the summer of 2009, Banksy mounted his most important exhibition, “Banksy vs. Bristol Museum.” It was a massive effort, with more than one hundred new pieces as well as some of the stuff from” The Village Pet” the year before. It became the most visited art exhibition in the UK ever. Kate Brindley was one of the museum directors at the time. She explains in the book” Banksy, the Man Behind the Wall” by Will Ellsworth-Jones:

“It was like a big sort of Changing Rooms. We shut the museum, and it all came in. The only reason we could do that was because they (The Banksy team) had the manpower and the finances. They were incredibly professional. I am used to putting on exhibitions, but it was done in such a large and accelerated fashion. It was like working with a film crew.”