Banksy has only gone and created a bemusement park in Weston-super-Mare. We scoped out just how dismal the place really is
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photo: Russ Slater
Maybe I'm bemused or did someone just build an amusement park in Weston-super-Mare, an amusement park that's actually quite good? Walking past care home after care home and what must be the seventeenth ropey, two-star bed and breakfast, on the way to Weston's seafront, seems a fitting way to arrive at Dismaland. Especially when the once glorious sunshine from your entire drive is suddenly ripped from your paws and replaced by rain, pelting the stream of people who've been queuing outside the park for hours – sometimes overnight – to pay their £3 entry and get their share of bemusement. For, after all, this is what we're all here for: Dismaland Bemusement Park.
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photo: Russ Slater
Renowned Bristolian street artist Banksy is behind the whole thing and unveiled Dismaland on Thursday 20 August, only allowing people in who’d got their ticket in the local Weston Mercury newspaper. Soon the park was open to visitors, but as the ticket system on the website was just a gimmick for the first week, this meant going all the way down to Weston to join the queue.
Disappointment was the name of the game – Austerity Britain, land of benefit bafflement, arts cuts and banker bonuses. It should be no surprise that one of the headline acts for Dismaland's weekly Friday night party is Sleaford Mods – other acts including Massive Attack, Pussy Riot, DJ Yoda, Run The Jewels and Mos Def, putting the Mods in mighty fine company. Intriguingly, another Nottingham export to find its way to Dismaland is Robin Hood Pale Ale, which is the official ale of the event.
Anyone familiar to Banksy's work will know of his agenda, based upon anarchy, subversion and guerrilla tactics. These tenets flow through the park, which is sandwiched somewhere between an art exhibition and an amusement park, albeit a heavily subverted one. There's a carousel complete with horses hanging from the ceiling, a zero-gravity capsule inside a caravan, a crazy golf course made from pieces of Cheltenham Ladies' College hockey pitch and even a remote-controlled boat game where all the boats are overcrowded with refugees.
Forming the dual centrepieces of the park are an old police riot van with a kids’ slide coming out of a door into the middle of a swimming pool – the park is based in Weston's now-defunct lido – and a model that clearly takes reference from the paparazzi's filming of Princess Diana's fatal car crash. In this case, the subject is Cinderella, her pumpkin crashed and surrounded by photographers.
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photo: Russ Slater
The most startling exhibit of all comes from Jimmy Cauty (from nineties anarcho-pop outfit The KLF) who has created a vast model town that in the words of the programme is “frozen in the moments just after a huge period of civil unrest.” Filling an entire room and crafted with such detail that his piece, at a quick glance, might be mistaken for a simple recreation of a British town or village, it soon becomes apparent that every person in the town is a policeman or woman. Entitled Aftermath Displacement Principle, it offers an intricate and time-consuming (in the artist's case) vision of modern Britain and the role of the police in our lives, fitting the theme of surveillance which has filtered its way into other works. Other notable artists to feature include Damien Hirst, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Gillette and Mike Ross, as well as a vast number from Banksy himself.
It's hard to know what to take from Dismaland. If the idea is to subvert our perception of what we think an amusement park can be then it's certainly achieved it. If its idea is to put contemporary art in a new setting where it can be enjoyed by a wider audience then it has most certainly achieved it. And if the whole ploy is simply to offer people a good day out, then I can think of fewer more enjoyable days I've had out (and, yes, that includes multiple trips to Drayton Manor). However, if the aim is to shake Britain out of its dismal state, then all it does is feed the fever. But then discussing whether art should provoke one into action is perhaps a debate for another day.
Sleaford Mods will be playing Dismaland on Friday 18 September. If you want tickets then you better move fast youth. Full details on the link below.
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