Taking the Mickey: Mock theme park Dismaland is Banksy’s biggest project yet
Works by 58 handpicked artists including Damien Hirst and Jenny Holzer have been installed across the 1 hectare site.
He describes it as a “family theme park unsuitable for small children”- and with the Grim Reaper whooping it up on the dodgems and Cinderella horribly mangled in a pumpkin carriage crash, it is easy to see why.
Banksy’s new show, Dismaland, which opened on Thursday on the Weston-super-Mare seafront in Somerset, England, is sometimes hilarious, sometimes eye-opening and occasionally breathtakingly shocking.
The artist’s biggest project to date had been shrouded in secrecy. Local residents and curious tourists were led to believe that the installations being built in a disused former lido called Tropicana were part of a film set for a Hollywood crime thriller called Grey Fox.
The name is a play on Disneyland, but Banksy insisted the show was not a swipe at Mickey and co. “I banned any imagery of Mickey Mouse from the site,” he said. “It’s a showcase for the best artists I could imagine, apart from the two who turned me down."
