The Art Of Banksy

Last August, the doors to Dismaland creaked open on a dingy, abandoned lido in the British seaside town of Weston-super-Mare. The "bemusement park" was a mind-bending, immersive art installation featuring the work of 58 artists united under the sardonic and satirical vision of mythic street artist Banksy.

The attention to detail of this exhibition was astonishingly total. Ushers and security staff in character as joyless, low-wage pions, sneered and leered at the public; clever touches, like spoof safety signs and balloons stamped with insulting quips, amplified the dark humour of this dystopian fairground. As with previous large scale curations by Banksy, such as The Cans Festival (2008), the power of Dismaland was locked in its wry, political audacity, the wit of its context and the complete absence of giving even the smallest fraction of a fuck. It was the very essence of what has made Banksy such a revered and popular phenomenon and the polar opposite of the clueless curatorial misfires found in Steve Lazarides' Art Of Banksy exhibition.

Buzz ahead of this show's opening has been justifiably fever-pitched; Banksy's name alone is a magnetic force. It's clear to see the ambition of this exhibition, as it desperately tries to replicate the same rebellious, disaffected character of Banksy's installations. It's staged in a pop-up space that claims to be part of a carpark, apparently mirroring the underpass road tunnel used by Banksy for The Cans Festival. In reality, the exhibition is housed in a pristine and smartly turned out marquis, complete with Astroturfed alfresco food court. There are signs as you approach, parroting Banksy sentiment like "this is not an Instagram opportunity", while simultaneously offering a hashtag. For all that it has brazenly plagiarised from Banksy, a startling number of aspects are so cack-handedly wrong that it seems almost deliberately disrespectful.

Made up largely of privately owned on-paper prints on loan, with a handful of sculptures thrown in, very little of what's on display is less than a decade old, and only a relatively small number are unique. Multiples of the same design appear cheek-by-jowl, and like a joke being repeated over and over, this utterly crushes the power of their punchline. Photographs of Banksy's guerrilla graffiti stencils try and represent the work the artist is most famous for, but in the sterile, airless environment of this space, they are robbed of their danger and uncompromising nerve. Occasionally some faux brick wall coverings try and insinuate a London street or Tube Station, but when decked out with carefully framed prints, the illusion quickly evaporates and the inauthenticity of trying to inject some urban credibility falls flat. 

This review gets a solitary star in recognition of Banksy's importance as an artist, although Steve Lazarides has proudly declared that this exhibition is completely unauthorised. "He'd fucking hate the thought of someone doing a retrospective," he told The Music in a recent interview, and it has to be said, it's easy to understand why this would be the case. In his own installations, Banksy celebrates his collaborations with other artists, giving their work pride of place. Here, a few token pieces by local street art talent are used to decorate the entry way - the only piece with any prominence is a portrait of Lazarides, sprayed on one of the gallery space's exterior walls.

But the greatest betrayal of this toothless exhibition is how brazenly it's geared towards wringing as many dollars as possible from the Banksy-loving public. A massive gift shop peddling caps and T-shirts branded with Banksy designs, next to a trendy, entirely un-ironic wine-bar, are the first things attendees see. It's blatantly clear that because Banksy's identity is anonymous, Lazarides believes he can make him a faceless brand, to be packaged and sold with the commercial cynicism and fickleness that Bansky's artwork's rail against. Lazarides himself has been rumoured to be the artist for several years; if this exhibition achieves anything, it's in proving once and for all that this is way off the mark.

Steve Lazarides presents The Art Of Banksy, at the Paddock pop-up behind Federation Square until Jan 22 2017