Friday 5th until Thursday 25th March 2010 @ Watershed, Bristol

Not content with dominating the art world, it seems the infamous Banksy has now turned his hand to cinema. On the face of it, his film, Exit Through The Gift Shop, is a colourful documentary about the rise of street art and its explosion in popularity over the last 5-10 years. We’ve got interviews with several of the big players (and some of the smaller ones), tales of their exploits and narrated segments of various “key” moments in the scene’s (and Banksy’s) history like the spraying of the West Bank wall and the placing of a Guantanamo Bay detainee model in Disneyland. Holding all this documenting together is the story of one man, a certain Thierry Guetta, and how his love of street art slowly took over his life and changed it beyond recognition.
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Saturday 16th until Saturday 30th January 2010 @ The Grant Bradley Art Gallery, Bristol

If there’s one thing you can say about Daniel Moncur-Sime, it’s that he knows how to get people involved. With a background in fashion and commercial photography, he’s a man who knows how to pinpoint what people want, and give it to them. On the first non-snowy day since Bristol whited out, that turned out to be, well, a bit of a laugh, some attention, and the chance to do something utterly different all in the name of art.
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I know it’s not very original to be saying this now but as much as others seem to rant, moan and complain about it, I am still no closer to understanding people’s obsessions with photographing literally everything and anything they see and do. An obsession that was once reserved for the Japanese tourist, it seems photo-mania has gone international and now you can’t move at a festival, gig, art exhibit or public event for people with their cameras out, instinctively and blinding punching buttons on their tiny camera-phones or huge digital SLRs; a mindless clicking that encourages them not to think, not to imagine, not to feel. What’s wrong with looking at and simply remembering something? What is their compulsive urge to snap everything that moves? It’s like an addiction.
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So that was all a bit bonkers wasn’t it? The Banksy bandwagon rolls into town, and everyone goes crazy for it. The media look for Banksy related stories left, right and centre, whilst people from literally all over the world queue for hours and hours to get into the Bristol city museum, a place that’s sadly often more noted for its rain sheltering abilities than its content. Not only that, but only a few months beforehand, similar scenes were seen for the graffiti/street art extravaganza at the Royal West of England Academy just up the road from the museum, where 50 graf-urban-street artists were let loose on the walls of that august institution.

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Saturday 5th December 2009 until Sunday 10th January 2010 @ Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol

I am a great appreciator of Bristol City Museum’s exhibitions - apparently even Brangelina visited for the Banksy indulgence. We the Bristol collective are gleaning fame.

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Thursday 17th until Sunday 20th December 2009 @ Bridewell Island, Bristol

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Really, any ideas? Who is Peter?