An anonymous review left on the ‘Art of Banksy’ Sydney website reads: “Brilliant… learnt so much more about the artist”. It is a perfect summary of the pop-up street art exhibition ‘The Art of Banksy: Without Limits’ at Sydney Town Hall. Here, the artist’s reputation precedes the art. Featuring over 180 of Banksy’s most popular prints, murals, and sculptures including ‘Girl with Balloon’, ‘Flower Thrower’, ‘The Mild Mild West’, as well as a whopping $40 entry fee, this exhibition feels like an exclusive (and expensive) walk-through a Banksy hall of fame.
Visitors enter through a faux security gate — one for the general visitors and the other for the premium ticket holders — both of which cleverly lead into the same room. The foyer features a sweeping billboard of Banksy’s life accomplishments, spread across a timeline dating back to 1999, and subtitled ‘Some of his impressive works’. The TLDR snapshots of Banksy’s artistic accomplishments set the scene perfectly for the main exhibit, which essentially offers life-sized versions of the photographs from the timeline. The most eye-catching is the ‘Dismaland arc’, replicating Banksy’s temporary art project set up at Somerset in 2015. What follows is a dizzying neon-lit corridor with replicas of some of Banksy’s most timeless pieces featured across various international exhibitions, including ‘Napalm’, ‘Submerged Phone Booth’, and ‘Anarchist Guard’. While each piece is thought-provoking, there is just so much packed into the one space that the experience teeters on overwhelming. There is also noticeably no unifying theme. While Banksy himself had carefully created each piece as a response to the status quo, the exhibition throws it all together in one room to state the painfully obvious — “Banksy is a political artist”.
Still, there are parts of the exhibition that do have merit. For one, the section of the gallery offering a taste of Banksy’s hotel in Palestine ‘The Walled Off Hotel’ feels relevant and interesting. A replica bathroom and bedroom are set up to mimic a room from the hotel, and it is the first time the viewer feels Banksy and his achievements have taken a side step in favour of a broader political message. Likewise, the unassuming, placard-less prints of little rats placed above floor skirtings or on wall corners are a subtle touch. They feel authentic and unserious, as if after all his international accolades, Banksy is still just the street-rat graffiti artist who makes art.
Unfortunately, the exhibition’s piece de resistance, the highly Instagrammable ‘Infinity Room’, summed up everything wrong with this exhibition. Featuring floor-to-ceiling mirrors projecting animations of Banksy’s art, the Infinity Room was the exhibition’s one jab at building a fully immersive and interactive exhibit for the general public (premium customers dish out even more cash to spray paint their own t-shirts). The placard outside the ‘Infinity Room’ reads “It is a place to experience Banksy’s artworks in eternity”, as if a few screens showing a reel of Banksy’s works on a loop can facilitate an ‘eternally’ lasting experience.
It is important to note that this exhibition was not endorsed by Banksy, but was rather the outcome of a partnership between Muse Marketing and Entertainment and an event promotion service Fever. As such, the purpose of this exhibition was always to put all of Banksy’s works together to draw large crowds and pocket big revenue. Yet this purpose feels odd because it is Banksy we are talking about — a notoriously anti-capitalist artist whose very philosophy is to challenge the exclusivity of gallery art by painting in public spaces and making art accessible to the masses. Banksy is anonymous because his art is not about him, it’s about the message it carries.
For an artist famously known for his discreteness, this exhibition’s celebration of Banksy’s oeuvre sure feels more ironic than iconic.
