Dismaland: Water Canon Creek (Florent Darrault) Weston-Super-Mare is our local seaside town, just 12 miles away or a short bus ride. Not really noted for cutting-edge events. Well that has all changed this last few weeks. The global Bristol phenomenon that is Banksy (an anonymous graffiti artist) secretly developed and curated a special experience called Dismaland - a not very subtle parody of Disneyland.
It all took place in the rather dismal setting of the old Tropicana on Weston-Super-Mare (WSM) seafront - a big open quadrangle built out on to the beach from the promenade that was once a slightly down-at-the-heel open-air swimming pool (or "lido") that even earlier was probably quite an attraction in its own right in WSM. But for many years it has been a slowly decaying eyesore on the seafront with a sequence of botched plans to turn it in to something modern and up-to-date. Well it seems Banksy saw it as the ideal location for his dismal show. And the whole experience was funnily awful, starting with the queue management staff, and security guards, and stewards all who were glum, bored, rude and apathetic. Not a smile amongst them. Inside were art exhibitions and tawdry takes and spoofs on the kind of underwhelming items you might get in any small theme park. Many artists (some were really big names like Damien Hirst) had all made works of art especially for the show, all of them with some cutting or ironic comment on modern society. Outside the visual jokes continued from wind power, to boat refugees, to a darkly lit eerie tableaux of Cinderella crashed and dead in her pumpkin carriage as she tried to escape paparazzi on scooters (shades of Princess Diana).
Certainly absorbing it took myself and friend (an art teacher) over four hours to take it all in (and have a refreshment stop). And only £5 to enter IF you could get hold of a ticket. Because the pulling power of Banksy is extraordinary and this has become a very hot ticket to have.
If you were lucky enough to have been here and got in then hopefully you'll realise that whilst this one part of (North) Somerset was very dismal (and darkly humorous) the rest of Somerset is anything but.
It all took place in the rather dismal setting of the old Tropicana on Weston-Super-Mare (WSM) seafront - a big open quadrangle built out on to the beach from the promenade that was once a slightly down-at-the-heel open-air swimming pool (or "lido") that even earlier was probably quite an attraction in its own right in WSM. But for many years it has been a slowly decaying eyesore on the seafront with a sequence of botched plans to turn it in to something modern and up-to-date. Well it seems Banksy saw it as the ideal location for his dismal show. And the whole experience was funnily awful, starting with the queue management staff, and security guards, and stewards all who were glum, bored, rude and apathetic. Not a smile amongst them. Inside were art exhibitions and tawdry takes and spoofs on the kind of underwhelming items you might get in any small theme park. Many artists (some were really big names like Damien Hirst) had all made works of art especially for the show, all of them with some cutting or ironic comment on modern society. Outside the visual jokes continued from wind power, to boat refugees, to a darkly lit eerie tableaux of Cinderella crashed and dead in her pumpkin carriage as she tried to escape paparazzi on scooters (shades of Princess Diana).
Certainly absorbing it took myself and friend (an art teacher) over four hours to take it all in (and have a refreshment stop). And only £5 to enter IF you could get hold of a ticket. Because the pulling power of Banksy is extraordinary and this has become a very hot ticket to have.
If you were lucky enough to have been here and got in then hopefully you'll realise that whilst this one part of (North) Somerset was very dismal (and darkly humorous) the rest of Somerset is anything but.
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