Banksy vs The Bristol Museum

REVIEW

This summer elusive (but now, alas, outed) Bristol based street artist Banksy is causing a (perhaps unusually sedate ) stir at the Bristol Museum, where his first UK exhibition continues until September. It's a suitably chaotic and uncurated collection of paintings and installations boasting the usual anarchic spin offs of classical works (the Mona Lisa etc) and wry subversions of the establishment.

Among the works are some graffiti pieces loyal Banksy fans will recognise - the hooded and masked street-fighter throwing a bunch of flowers; the policemen kissing passionately; the house-cleaner sweeping dust under a brick wall - but also some brand new, and certainly some of Banksy's best, mechanised objects - a caged family of cctv cameras pecking on birds nests; a policeman rocking hauntingly on a child's coin operated machine horse; a leapord skin coat draped around a tree, flicking its tail lethargically as if it were a resting animal.

In some ways, this is a brave thing for the museum to have done. Not only does it seem to sanction the artist's often illegal activities, in some ways it celebrates the anarchy underpinning all of Banksy's work. Hence, presumably, the museum's decision to wave the normal proscription on photography, and hence the free admission. Art galleries, and certainly museums, are ordinarily places of order and decorum, places where the citizen is silent and acquiescent, and hosting a Banksy exhibition seems rather like holding a boxing match in a church. Maybe this is the point. At any rate, as one of the artist's works declares (its a plywood block with a message splashed across in white emulsifierr paint) 'Its amazing what passes for Art if you put it in a golden frame.'

Banksy is certainly one of Britain's most popular (if not one of its most respected) artists, and the museum has been attracting droves. It's not your average bloc-spectacled art loving elite either, but a younger, more garrulous crowd streaming through the galleries. And it is a stream too, for like most Banksy works none of these pieces seems to demand much pause for thought. Instead, they elicit the kind of reaction the artist has always garnered, the humoured, satisfied, but ultimately rather hollow 'mmmm!'

Call me a snob, but everything Banksy does seems to me to be getting at the same point - look how regulated and repressive modern urban living is, let's all cut loose and rebel before we get swallowed up by Big Brother. Its by no means an empty sentiment, and its certainly well executed, but it all seems a bit unsophisticated.

For me, Banksy is a brilliant political commentator. If he worked for Punch, Private Eye, or the New York Times (and he never would), he would no doubt win awards. As an artist, however, awards seem few and far between.

Go and see Banksy at the Bristol Museum, but don't expect to stay for more than half and hour.