Preview (Friday)
Ian Brown
Sean Pertwee - actor
Mr Glastonbury - Michael Eavis, giving an autograph (?)
Peter Blake - who has a permanent piece of work in the museum.
Queues - an hour before opening (Saturday)
Press coverage
And we got to shake the hand of the Mayor of Bristol going in. Strange morning indeed.Well as rumoured earlier and reported, said Banksy exhibition arrived on Saturday.
"Banksy vs Bristol Museum" is an amazing feat of putting an exhibition up in a couple of days, which few people appeared to know about - with so much of his work to see (new and old). And so many people are going to see it, especially as it's on for 3 months - and it's free! (apparently subsidised by the man himself).
The whole event was an interesting study in 'media', 'celebrity' and playing the game. And I fear this is an end to some of Banksy's old-school credibility by being so populist. It's definitely the end of something, something I can't put my finger on. But for me, I had a lot of fun piecing together snippets of info, using Twitter to it's full capacity (thanks Twitter buddy), and running around in my lunchtime looking for clues, especially ending up in a museum (a la Scooby Doo).
The preview was PR'd to the max - promoted by the Evening Post as 'celeb filled'. Carol Vorderman, Sean Pertwee, Justin Lee Collins, Michael Eavis, Meg Matthews, that bloke off of River Cottage. The more credible guests were Ian Brown, Peter Blake, Damien Hirst and Massive Attack, and some of the original Bristol Graffitti names - most of the guests lived locally - so a strange mix.
I love the fact it's in Bristol Museum, as I grew up a couple of streets away from it, and if you grew up in Bristol you were definitely dragged around it as a child, (although I was never a great fan of the stuffed animals, and the museum smell - especially the ugly huge fish which was next to Alfred the Gorilla and the Dodo).
And a nice touch that Banksy incorporated was the Gyspy caravan (with the eviction notice, and the Guantanamo pilot in the plane in the main hall), which are all original museum artifacts from my childhood memory.
There will be kids being dragged to this museum on a field trip, like I was (and presumeably Banksy too), but this time they will love the humour, be inspired or at least have fun, and take away some happy memories - and that in itself is quite a powerful thing.
