IMG_7249

Last weekend, I head to Dismaland after getting tickets from a very Dismal and uncooperative website.

Banksy is pretty well known for shutting exhibitions down with the sheer volume of people wanting to see his new work, and wether his identity is still a mystery or not, his marketing team is extremely good at only letting you know what they want and when they want.

His last exhibition in London was free and there was queue’s left right and centre for it, so it was always known that Dismaland was gonna be a hit. When they released the fact that there would be tickets for only £3 I saw mixed emotions, some people said it was a money making scheme, but most were stoked at such a low price to see artwork from over 50 different artists – I was one of those people. So when tickets finally came on sale I snapped them up and head down on the first weekend that it was open to more than just the residents of surrounding areas. As it was only open for 5 weeks, taking the 4 hour round trip could realistically only be done on a weekend.

The experience itself was pretty surreal, the staff there were such a huge input to the experience and the composition of the whole place was incredible. Not to mention the artwork and the very strong messages put across by most of it. The artwork varied massively from paintings, props, pictures, creations, all the way to giant sculptures and just the fact that the Dismaland itself and experience within was basically a work of art in itself.

Banksy couldn’t have chosen a better location either, even when you “exit through the giftshop” back to ‘reality’ and walk along the beach, it doesn’t 100% feel like you’ve actually left. With stalls charging £2 for a game that would be impossible to win such a terrible prize, to donkeys pulling around a giant Thomas the Tank Engine cart. Weston Super Mare definitely has character to say the least.

I strongly urge anyone to head down to Dismaland, at least just for the experience. I also highly recommend getting tickets in advance off the website (they release tickets 7 days at a time, which quickly sell out) as when we went down, the Walk-In que was shut by 1.30pm…

If you don’t get to go down there, the coverage it has got is world wide, so I’m sure you’ll be able to find pictures or videos of the entire park. It’s not quite as amazing as experiencing it first hand, but here are a few of the pictures that I grabbed when I was there. All pictures I took that day can be viewed here.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.