sootyj
Friday 11th September 2015 2:18pm [Edited]
51,287 posts
I went to Dismaland and this is what I thought of it.
You enter Dismaland first of all via a proper security check to ensure you're not bringing in any glass bottles or aerosol paint cans. It would appear the free spirit of graffiti in Banksy's garden of earthly delights is to be restricted to the professional sprayers.
No "Cock, Piss Banksy" Thank you.
The initial vision is impressive; the vast castle looms up a jagged, rusty finger stabbing into a cloudless blue Weston Super-Mare sky (it was a lovely day). Surrounded by the lake with sculptures, its an arresting image. Which seems to signify....not a great deal.
Entering the gallery on the left is a darkened room, with uneven floors and milling crowds. Is the school of art based on poor health and safety? There's an electronic smiley face giant, who's features have fallen to the bottom. And then one of the show pieces a grim reaper in a bumper car, driving around to the Bee Jees's Staying Alive. Like much of what will be seen it feels like a product of the lost Monty Python Sketch "art for the imaginatively challenged;"
Then into a well lit with some paintings. Not entirely sure if they were bad or deliberately bad, or just hard to see in a very bright room having come from a very dark one. It did resemble a Church sale of local art for the roof fund. But apparently another viewer declared a picture of a Muslim woman holding up a pair of her knickers with the name of God on them in menstrual blood, was worth selling her car to buy. Not sure if the car was worth anything or even if the blood was gravy and Arabic writing the word Bisto.
At the back of this room was Jimmy Cauty's mini village. This art was strange since the whole of Dismaland was a joke, and this was the punchline. This was real art. A huge chicken wire encased cityscape, of rioting toy police officers (like you used to get with Hornby railway sets), with flashing electric lights. A Dismaland staffer slowly and in a monotone describes what you're seeing. The village had a vision, thousands of models, telling dozens of stories to create one whole.
But it was the punchline because this was a real piece of art with meaning that could take an age to pull out. Then wondering out into the lovely sunshine you're presented with the fairground where you can sit in a spinning caravan or buy a cardboard fish finger for £2 or throw a ping pong ball at an anvil. For some reason or other, an open air cinema that seemed to be showing a film about piss and shit (literally and appropriately). Before you enter the castle itself along the bridge passed the crashed armoured vehicle. The viewer sees a short extract of Cinderella the Disney Movie. Then you see her carriage turned over and her tragic corpse surrounded by Paparazi mannequins taking pictures of it. The room is completely dark except for the flashing camera bulbs. It's an impressively constructed image, but again so what? Its just Candle in the Wind with mannequins and unlike Candle in the Wind you can't dance to it.
There was also a section of revolutionary art and advice on how to protest about foreign cleaners being badly paid and Boris Johnson stabbing tramps with spikes. This exhibition seemed to be earnestly saying 'this isn't funny'! Next door to this was the mini golf course (very mini slightly ironic) and a clever little stall advertising pocket money loans for kids. On the way out you could have your photograph taken at a seaside photo stall. But instead of jolly fat ladies and muscular fellows, you could pretend to be in ISIS with a machine gun (they rather bottled it by not having a chance to have your photo taken in a martyrdom video about to be beheaded).
Probably the second best thing in Dismaland is the staff who do seem to be sticking to their remit about being dismal. Scowling, being terse they made the atmosphere. Except one jolly fella who kept sneaking up on people grinning and going boo, but he was foreign. So either was a clever intertextual joke on immigration or just hadn't understood the briefing.. They added to the feel of the place. Indeed at the kids play area, full of broken toys and depressing art, was Iain Duncan Smith taking notes? There was a fantastic scene of natural theatre. A staff member was kipping with a toy chainsaw. An adorable small child bumped his foot with a broken trolley. He jumped up and waved his toy chainsaw after which she promptly burst into tears and ran to her yummy mummy. Who burst out laughing as she decorously swigged from a can of cider and a collection of men who resembled Jeremy Corbyn (Dismaland is big with the grey bearded, over 70s crowd) photographed the event. Poor girl may well be in need of some psychoanalysis somewhere down the road.
Dismaland? Well, it's a fun way to spend the day. The overall look and construction is impressive. Even if much of the art is painfully shallow and the actual punchline "modern life is revolting so revolt!" The cliché of so much government funded art (now there's irony). Seems to be lost in hordes of pseuds of all ages admiring its ironicness. Banksy may have wanted to parody the Disneyfication of contemporary culture by creating a cracked reflection of it.
Instead, he's created more of an homage to it. I could picture House of Mouse offering him a fat cheque to make Dismaland as Disney Land UK.
"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."