Articles

Lyndon Blue

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP’ – A BANKSY FILM @ LUNA CINEMAS, LEEDERVILLE

June 23

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP’ – A BANKSY FILM @ LUNA CINEMAS, LEEDERVILLE

Not heard of Banksy? Chances are he’s already stenciled the giant rock you’ve been living under. For over a decade, the enigmatic Bristol artist has been been garnering a reputation as a notorious prankster and the most influential graffiti maker in the world, lining public walls with cheeky stencilled imagery, hijacking art galleries, even leaving his mark in zoos, at Disneyland and on the Israeli West Bank Barrier. Now, at this point you may be exclaiming: “What the rat!? This isn’t a gig review, or even a music review!” You’re quite right. It isn’t. But given Perth’s robust (if underappreciated) street art scene, a look at the new Banksy movie seems to have some local relevance. It was a cool Monday night, I drifted into Leederville, and one pizza later I was amidst the velvety crimson of Luna Cinema, recalling how Banksy likes to outdo himself whenever possible. With his foray into film, what might the merry scoundrel have in store?

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP begins by introducing us to mutton-chopped, fedora-topped, LA-based Frenchman Thierry Guetta. Thierry runs a vintage clothing store and carries a camcorder at all times – supposedly documenting his life obsessively since his mother’s death during his childhood. One day, Thierry meets up with his cousin in Paris, who happens to be the now-renowned mosaic-graffiti artist Invader (seen those small tiled space invaders dotted around the Perth CBD? Invader’s own). He allows Thierry to film his exploits, and after tagging along (pun incidental) on a series of exhilarating night-time graffiti missions, Tierry is well and truly bitten by the street art bug.

On return to LA, Tierry meets up with eminent street artist OBEY, a.k.a Shepard Fairey, notable for his ‘André The Giant’ series and the Baracka Obama ‘HOPE’ poster. Somehow, Tierry begins filming all of OBEY’s outings too, acting as both archivist and watchdog for the street artist; before long, he’s filming every wall-painter he can find. One guy remains elusive – you guessed it, Banksy. That is, until a fortuitous encounter via OBEY during one of Banksy’s LA trips. As Banksy’s new camera-man and accomplice, Tierry follows a trail of graffiti mayhem and accumulates mounds upon mounds of footage. It’s sort of like watching urban Bear Grylls, with less bug-munching and more subversive public artistry. That’s all well and good, until Banksy pressures Tierry to finish the documentary he’s supposedly making: his film-making effort proves to be a piece of mindfucking schizophrenic weirdness called ‘Life Remote Control’, and in the film’s central turning point, Banksy takes over the reins of the documentary, instructing Tierry to go make some art in LA instead. What Banksy didn’t expect was that Tierry, now calling himself “Mr. Brainwash”, would venture forth to not only rip off Banksy, OBEY, Andy Warhol and more – he’d do it on an unprecedented scale, attracting unprecedented hype, breaking his foot and making millions in the process.

There’s been a lot of speculation on the internet and elsewhere as to whether the events depicted in ETTGS are genuine. Watching the film, I called bullshit as soon as Banksy began to suggest that out of every single geezer in the world, he’d decided to entrust this bumbling, barely Anglophone, slightly insane buffoon with the mammoth secrets of his identity, whereabouts, and artistic processes. The film takes pains to justify this decision but, perhaps intentionally, it’s not convincing in the least. Banksy, who appears in interviews throughout shrouded in a dark hoodie and with his voice digitally manipulated for anonymity, describes how he befriended the Frenchman but eventually beheld his lunacy upon viewing ‘Life Remote Control.’ A supposed snippet of that film is shown and well, while it is unwatchable, it’s certainly not the work of an amateur – it’s a super-slick piece of lo-fi clusterfuck pastiche. Then you consider the inexplicable fact that when Thierry then returns to LA with unexpectant, condescending instructions to make a bit of art, Banksy sends a professional film crew to document the whole thing – especially the most hilarious and ridiculous moments, like interviews that reek of sheer parody and Thierry’s outlandish Warhol-esque “art factory.” It all stinks of conspiracy from the get-go, although as a hoax, it would be a damn impressive one, requiring the co-operation of OBEY, Thierry, Banksy and the conning of the LA public many years in advance. It would be an utter masterpiece of multi-tiered trickery. It’d be an ingenious, meticulously planned stunt that first fools one poseur audience in LA, and then another one the world over who think they’re in on the joke. And if the film’s events aren’t staged, it’s almost equally brilliant – due to its sheer improbability and bizarre hilarity.

But whether the film’s event are “real” doesn’t necessarily matter that much. Either way, the film’s definitely a very clever composite of reality, selective editing and little fib-fibs: in his typically tongue-in-cheek press release for the film, Banksy wrote that “Everything you are about to see is true, especially the bit where we all lie.” Be he earnest or cunningly contrived, “Mr. Brainwash” herein is a symbol of everything that’s wrong with street art and the art world in general: undue hype, pretentious bombast, forged credibility and outright plageurism. The character of Thierry shifts from being a lovable fool to an encapsulation of everything Banksy hates – and, to an extent, a scapegoat onto which Banksy offloads many of the criticisms that he himself has faced. Apparently his images are facile, overly appropriationist, and he “sold out” when he started fostering a cult of personality and distributing this subversive art in a capitalist manner. Sound familiar?

So what does ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ mean for Perth street art? Well for one thing, the film’s widespread popularity (even my mum wants to see it) will increase awareness about street art and graffiti – hopefully fostering an environment that’s a bit less tight-arsed about the whole thing. Meanwhile, as the cynical title suggests, it’s bound to heighten suspicion surrounding commercially successful street artists. Is Yok a sellout now for making sticker books and merchandise? An artist’s gotta earn a living too, but this film suggests that rakin’ in the scrilla is a cardinal sin. While many prominent Perth street artists – such as the aforementioned Yok, Daek, Creepy, Kid Zoom and Sean Morris – owe perhaps more aesthetically to indie illustration and comicbook art than to Banksy’s stencil stylings, his influence is nevertheless omnipresent, and his cinema debut will be no exception. Like an entertaining nougat centre wrapped in layer upon layer of the chocolate of irony, ambiguity and semi-realities, ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ will be savoured and sucked on for a while yet, which could mean any number of things for the street art community. Under any interpreation, this is the film of a man who once said “playing it safe will always end in disaster,” now serving up an outrageous cautionary fable about foolhardy graffiti gone wrong. “I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art…” falters Banksy in one of his interview scenes. The rest, as we see, is history.