One of the reasons for this blog is to speak. And speak I shall. I want to share loads of things. I want to talk about good stuff and I want to set a few records right. As much as I love Instagram, and I do, I love looking at the graffiti and making contacts for my travels what I don’t like about this world we live in now is what I think we used to call, ‘chip shop paper mentality’. So what you see someone do today you forget about tomorrow, or what you see on social media allows you to make entire assumptions about that person.  My life isn’t a throw away thing. No ones is. I have some awesome memories and I want to get them written down before I start drooling into a glass looking for my teeth and denture glue.  As I said at the start (keep up – read first blog entry) this is about me hahaha. And Im writing about it for me. So…….

Back in 2009 I travelled down to Bristol with my children to visit the Banksy Exhibition at Bristol Museum. Now this is truly shocking news – wait….its STREET ART! …worse still its BANKSY…. ah, I can feel the mass unfollowing beginning already…..but wait hear me out!!

Just like broccoli and liver and onions, I honestly think that you can’t make a proper comment on something, especially when its a HUGE area of discussion in graffiti world without actually getting some facts and experience of it.  My background and upbringing had a lot of ‘art’ in it. There were and still are artists and styles that I actually dislike enormously and conversely there are artists which I truly admire and like to look at. The same for me is true with street art. In a nutshell, I don’t like street art. There isn’t even any slight discussion to be had here. But in order for me to get to that decision I had to learn, engross myself in and understand graffiti. I have massive debates (arguments) with people about street art versus graffiti. To me in its simplest definition and for me personally graffiti is the truer and more honest of the two. Graffiti is letters. Street art is too contrived, too many characters, too pretty and….well I could go on but I wont. BUT as a non expert in either field, and I remain a non expert in either field the knowledge I have made me make the choice I have and that is simply  – graffiti is the craft which I love and respect and street art is a commercial contrived product which I do not.

The children were actually children once.

One of the children, I cant remember which one, was doing an art project at junior school. We went to investigate what all the fuss was about Banksy and the pictures pretty much answer that.

I went with an open mind. I left with a strong opinion….

Basically it was a bit like looking at an entire museum of people who were loosing their minds. I’m very wary of hysteria. It has a smack of cultness to it to me – hence why I have always liked different things from my music tastes to my food to my art. But on that day people literally were overly excited. I was just failing to see what people thought was so amazing about stencils but it occurred to me by the point we got to the ‘set up of Banksy workshop’ that this was just mass media control. Tell people that the person is a big secret and just pure curiosity sets hearts racing. Add a bit of generalised naughtiness in the guise of the big secret being a cheeky lad climbing buildings and vandalising stuff and you have the makings of a pop idol. I can’t knock anyone for making money and I’m not now – but I just didn’t like it. But at this time I also didn’t also know any of the history behind the beef, I didn’t know enough about anything to make judgements except to trust my own instincts. And those told me I didn’t like it, I hadn’t bought into it and I wasn’t going to. I basically had no bias except my own pure opinion and I think that is an important point to make. I just didn’t like ‘street art’.

Interestingly enough however. Neither did my children. The photos speak for themselves and believe me the conversation on the drive home (before they both of course sparked out) also showed me that they didn’t get it either.  Katy was still asking why the hotdog wasn’t edible and that no ice cream had been for sale in the ice cream van whilst Molly was sad for the characters that had been cut out of oil paintings (pretend obviously) as she had preferred them as they were before Banksy had messed with them…..

Its a hotdog. It moves. I cant comprehend why I cant just eat it?

Nah I don’t get it? Mom?

Interestingly, even though I gave it a go, I still hate broccoli…..

Banksy Versus Bristol Museum was held in the summer of 2009 in Bristol, UK.