Bristol - Part 2

 35 photos under the cut...

Graffiti artist Banksy took over the Bristol Museum in a surprise event. The public were allowed/encouraged to take photos -- the whole exhibition plays with traditional museum expectations and behaviour, so I suppose that's all part of that. These are photos of my favourite objects.

Some young wag has tagged the sign...'Angel of the North'

Plaster statues in the entrance atrium

There was a big room dedicated to paintings on canvas -- I didn't photograph much in there because it was all in the famous stencil style.

The rest of Banksy's paintings, parodying traditional styles, are dotted around the usual galleries. I photographed the obvious ones, but the more subtle ones blended in rather well, and weren't always easy to spot (esp. in the modern galleries).

LOCAL ARTIST - Agency Job (Gleaners) - 2009

LOCAL ARTIST - Girl at the Windows - 2006

He really seems to have a thing about frames

'The Flight to Egypt (Budget Version)'

A whole room was dedicated to an animatronic menagerie.

Chicken nuggets, pecking at the sauce and tweeting at each other.

Sausages slowly squirming in tanks like snakes.

Sipping at the water bowl

From behind, a leopard sleeps, occasionally flicking his tail...

From the front, an artfully folded leopard-print jacket -- you realise the tail is a belt

Monkey painter dreaming of the tropics. His face is animated to blink and sometimes he winks at you

Make-up bunny twitches and methodically files her nails

The baby CCTV cameras bob up and down and their lenses shift in and out, like the jerky heads of chicks. The electronic whirring sounds like tweets. Inexplicably cute.

Aged Tweety-Pie languishes in his cage

Also animatronic, but he barely moves. Sometimes his eyes struggle to open, then he sighs and closes them again

Banksy had placed sneaky amendments to the other museum exhibits, it seemed to be about two per section. It made you look at every object and diorama in the place far more closely than you normally would -- like a treasure hunt. My brother even said, 'I keep forgetting to look for the Banksy stuff and I'm just enjoying the museum!'

From a display case about Darwin and evolution: 'Here are examples of potential new animals that may evolve on earth'

On a Romany caravan

In a case of delicate Japanese porcelain

Hand-stamped to make sure we didn't jump the insane queue. (Arrived 8.20am, entered 11.15am = shortest possible queuing time. Queuing time gets longer throughout the day and we were told they have had to close in the early afternoon due to overcrowding. Banksy's popular.)

I loved this exhibition. I have mixed feelings about the artist -- disagree with some of his (simplistic, scattergun) politics, but came away from this feeling that he expresses them with wit, warmth and cheek. I got the impression that he's really fond of traditional museums but also wants to shake them up and surprise the viewer, which appeals to me very much. I didn't know much about his work beyond the iconic stencil graffiti, so it was a great eye-opener.