It’s not easy being a superstar anti-establishment art celebrity. Back in the late 1990s I was one of a group of art students who, for a time, became mildly famous as art pranksters. Within the group we could never be sure – and this despite our most earnest efforts – that our work really was the stuff of revolution. But we were in the papers. We were on the Turner Prize programme. We were even offered a book deal. Nonetheless it’s hard to maintain revolutionary kudos once you’ve been interviewed by Timmy Mallett.
And so I feel for Banksy. In Bristol, his street-pieces are still powerful landmarks even if we know, and he knows, what a dichotomy he represents, caught somewhere between art and artifice; an anarchist in capitalist giftwrap.
This being so, I was not expecting much from his latest hyped-up creation, Dismaland. I assumed it would be trying too hard to recapture that lost edginess; that old sold-out soul. An art Dumbo, painting its face like a clown; an elephantine joke that isn’t funny.
And yet. And yet.
Weston-super-Mare has become a byword for every cliche ever mouthed about the British seaside. Fish-paste sandwiches. Miserable donkeys. Rain. More rain. Somewhere along the seafront, a life-size dummy of the Queen stares out from a hotel window.
