Banksy in Bristol

I stood for four and three quarter hours to get into the wretched Banksy show today, all the way convincing myself it would be worth it, that it was the cultural event of the year because it was an outstanding achievement. Periodically, I gave passers by doleful looks, just in case they didn’t see the metaphorical cross on my back as represented by my perma-scowl and my increasingly pronounced limp, caused by flowering foot cramps and torrid misanthropy after hearing the inane droning of others in the queue.

The queue didn’t stop at the museum’s entrance. We filed past some garishly painted portaloos, made up to look like Stonehenge. The first photo opportunity. I waited, patiently, as every person in front of me fucked their photo up a few times, due to a trickling of punters exiting the show, past this first, and last, piece of art.

We shuffled a little more, finally entering the museum proper, past a trashed ice-cream van, complete with real-life security guard inside. People, however, had caught a glimpse of the selection of statues scattered around the entrance hall. And decided to take photos of these instead. They smiled in front of the camera, the shutter clicked, and their morose expressions took their faces back over.

We entered a room stuffed with Banksy paintings. I could see most of these becoming t-shirts pretty soon. Some self-serving audio was being played somewhere; miscellaneous guff concerning Banksy as grafitti artist and public menace. I remember reading something about that a few years ago.

We were advised not to take flash photography. So many people packed the galleries, most of whom were flagrantly disobeying this advice, the gallery minions had stopped enforcing the policy. I was forced to look longer at some of the art, getting increasingly bored of it, as I waited for a line of people in front of every picture, fuck their photos up a few times (thanks to people being less considerate, walking across the frame).

By the staircase, were animatronics, some of which were previously displayed in New York, in cages. The swimming fish sticks had seemed to stop swimming. I felt as processed, taken advantage of and tired as the chicken, now in chicken nugget form, feasting on its water bowls, full of BBQ sauce. Instead of the mother hen looking over me, I could feel Banksy’s stare from somewhere. I remembered the stencilled message on the side of the museum ‘This is not a queuing opportunity’ and swear I could hear laughing from somewhere.

Things were quieter upstairs, except for the odd family charging through the galleries, past the Renoir, the George Stubbs the Beryl Cooks trying to find the ‘hidden’ Banksy exhibits.

Ultimately, I was only in there for an hour. Bansky has become part of the establishment. He needs to go beyond these visual equivalents of sound bites, which look so attractive on t-shirts, warranting perhaps a ten-second glance in a gallery, and create something which would deserve more scrutiny, and less attention.