Banksy versus Bristol Museum

Bristol Museum is a council run Art Gallery with exhibitions that would probably attract low to average attendance figures in a normal day. During the summer of 2009, there were about 4000 people visiting on a daily basis to see the work of the mysterious controversial graffiti artist Banksy. It was estimated that there were a total of 300,000 visitors to the exhibition bringing £15 million to the economy of Bristol. The museum made it into the top 30 of global exhibition attendance figures for 2009.

It is said that Banksy put on the exhibition to thank Bristol for supporting his early street work where he made a lot of mistakes and the council were quick to paint over or remove the artwork. It was ironic that Banksy organised this exhibition with three minor people without the council having any prior knowledge. There were adverts placed in local job centres for 14 full time staff to oversee the exhibition during this period.

Banksy had succeeded in getting his work displayed publicly without the authorities knowing about it. It seemed that he had won his battle in his self titled "Banksy versus Bristol Museum".

Banksy quotes :-
"This is the first show I've done where the Taxpayers money is being used to hang my pictures up rather than scrape them off"

"People either love me or hate me, or they don't really care"

On friday 7th August 2009, I was dropped off by car on a road near the docks (where I took the Clifton Suspension bridge photo in an earlier post) at 7:30am as my car driver was en route to work in the city. I was previously warned about the 3 & 1/2 hour queues and was advised to go there for the exhibition opening.

The famous Queue later at 12:30

...so instead of going to my usual Starbucks waiting for the shops to open, I made my way here and got a take out tea across the road and took my place in the queue at 8:15. I was fortunate to say that I had a place in the small queue outside the building (first photo) wait in the queue.  There was a good atmosphere with Big Issue sellers ( homeless entrepreneurial magazine seller giving themselves some money) making a fortune. I read it from cover to cover as the museum opened at 10am !

My view from the queue !

Ice Cream van ...Reception and information point.

I hope you enjoy this selected tour of the gallery that I have given you here. Some of his work is a statement about his views on life and ethics which don't lend themselves to still photography and for those reasons, I have had to edit it out. This set in my opinion was Banksy's best work on display.

Studio

               

Mother and Punk

Chimpanzee Parliament

The opposition

Hartcliffe

Silent Night

U.F.O.

Damien Hirst (modification)

House on the Hill

Signature

Flight to Egypt (budget) Claude Derain

Lion Tamer

Paris Hilton goes shopping

All too soon it was time to leave and allow more people to enter the building before it got too crowded, it was at this point that I discovered the extent of the queue outside....

Anyone for an Ice Cream ? !!

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P.S. I recently updated this set (April 2014) and as a bonus here are the alternative images of those in the post for a bit of entertainment.

The Flight to Egypt ( Claude Derain / Banksy / J_on _tour)

Banksy Queue, University Road Bristol