‘As far as I can tell the only thing worth looking at in most museums of art is all the schoolgirls on daytrips with the art departments’
Banksy

 On Thursday 11 June 2009 staff at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery turned up for work to find the museum transformed, the collection ‘remixed’ and their beautiful building handed over to  Banksy. In Banksy: The Bristol Legacy, the curator, critics, the public and others look at what it meant to the gallery, the city and the art world.

It’s said 300,000 people saw the show in 12 weeks. By 9am the queue snaked round the block; six hours waiting for some. Banksy versus Bristol Museum was the biggest show in a provincial British gallery – ever.

In Banksy: The Bristol Legacy we ask how and why it happened, we look at the history of street protest, the love-hate relationship between street art and the establishment and ask the question, is it art? There are voices of dissent, reverence and cool questioning –and all of them are fascinating, entertaining and eloquent.

Curator Kate Brindley describes how it felt handing over the keys of  the city’s cherished building and valuable contents to Banksy’s hooded crew, and how her team, the city and the public  responded.

Editor Paul Gough, Professor of Fine Arts at University of  the West of England, paints an evocative picture of clandestine conversations, of press attempts to get hold of  correspondence, of the surprise of seeing a Guantanamo-type figure in the pilot seat of the Museum’s much-loved (and impossible to reach) boxplane. He also describes the massive interest in the book and traces the tensions that linger, and occasionally erupt, under the carapace of the city.

There is a potted biography of the world’s most elusive artist by veteran correspondent John Hudson.

Critic David Lee assesses Banksy’s artistic merits (and yes, Banksy has seen the text)

‘The main reason I didn’t visit the Bristol exhibition is that I’m interested in art and when visiting an art gallery this is what I expect to see.’

Eugene Byrne, a writer who few can match for his granular reading of the city, examines the immediate impact of the show and the artist’s ambivalent relationship with ‘official’ Bristol.

‘Thirty years ago, official Bristol persecuted graffiti artists with the full vigour of the law and the juvenile courts. Nowadays Bristol uses street art to market a cool and edgy image to everyone from tourists to businesses and potential undergraduates.’

Cultural impresario and historian Andrew Kelly, aware that many consider the artist to be little more than a witty one-line ‘quality vandal’, celebrates his more generous attributes.

Steve Poole, Director of the UWE’s Regional History Centre, flies a flag for historical agitators, in ‘Drawn in chalk, but graffiti all the same: street protest in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Bristol’.

Katy Bauer describes the fall out from Banksy’s gift to the Bristol community of a ‘Tesco Value’ petrol bomb ‘we’d loved him for it this long, to start getting irritated now that he was wafting around our own back yard would have been churlish’.

Art Curator Kath Cockshaw champions street art and describes how the Royal West of England Academy staged ‘Crimes of Passion’, when ‘Filthy Luker’s trafficstopping giant inflatable green tentacles’ waved nonchalantly in the wind’.

Lawyer John Webster asks if we should be protecting street art with ‘Listed’ status and economists Anthony Plumridge and Andrew Mearman add up the figures to assess the economic impact on Bristol of the Banksy phenomenon. Maria Bower takes the public pulse in  ‘Thank you, Mr Banksy’ and publisher John Sansom visits the 2011 Bristol street art festival to wonder: have the Outsiders started to bond with the Establishment? and, more pertinently, what’s left after the crowds have gone?

Dr Anna Farthing asks the question, who won? To find out, contact us for more.

UWE/Redcliffe Regional History Series

UWE’s Regional History Centre and  Bristol publishers Redcliffe Press are to join forces to publish a series of regional history studies covering Bristol and its hinterland.

The first volume, on Social Life on the Bristol Waterfront 1750-1880, edited by Steve Poole,  is planned for September 2012.  Several contributors tell the  amazing stories of the people who lived and worked in and around the city docks.

Another commissioned topic is A History of Women in Bristol: Shaping the city c.1700-2000, to be published in autumn 2013.   Edited by Madge Dresser, this will not be a celebration of ‘Bristol Greats’ but will explore the lives and achievements of a broad cross section of Bristol women.

Director of UWE’s Regional History Centre, Steve Poole said they expected to publish one or two titles a year.  In time, these would grow into a major historical resource. The books would be commissioned and edited by the UWE regional history team, and funded and published by Redcliffe.  He added: ‘With 35 years
experience of local publishing, Redcliffe Press are UWE’s logical partners in this exciting project.’

Redcliffe have now published more than 230 books on aspects of life in Bristol, ranging from architecture to football, and from cinema to Bristol’s suburban railway stations.    Director John Sansom says: ‘It was almost inevitable  for UWE and Redcliffe to join forces like this.  I’m only surprised we didn’t do it years ago.

‘For us, it will ensure a flow of significant, authoritative studies of Bristol topics – scholarly yet accessible, jargon-free and aimed at an intelligent public audience – which will add greatly to our knowledge and understanding of this great city.’

For a full book review, please see Regional Historian, Winter 2011

http://www.galleries.co.uk/g-bok.shtml

In his oration at a ceremony in the University’s Great Hall,
Michael Liversidge, Emeritus Dean of Arts, said the award was for John’s contribution to publishing and to the South West.   ‘With his wife Angela, he  established Redcliffe Press 35 years ago and
has succeeded in putting Bristol on the national publishing map.  John is being awarded an honorary degree in recognition of outstanding achievement and distinction in a field of activity consonant with the University’s mission.

‘The Redcliffe Press rose to local prominence principally but not exclusively as a publisher of books about Bristol, its region and the West Country.  It has made books about the history and culture of Bristol and Bristolians accessible to the public, and has done much to awaken interest in the city and its heritage.’

Redcliffe has now published more than 220 books about Bristol alone, but (through its associated company, Sansom & Co) is also now  known nationally as a leading publisher of books about twentieth-century British art and artists.

‘In this time, he has worked tirelessly with scores of authors, involving himself creatively in the publishing process.  John has also been an active supporter of the Friends of Bristol Art Gallery, Royal West of England Academy, the Bristol Short Story Competition and the Bristol
Review of Books of which he was a founder-editor.

‘The part he has played in Bristol life over several decades has been recognised by the Bristol Evening Post, with its Lifetime Achievement Award and by the City with the rare distinction of a Lord Mayor’s Medal.

‘What has always made Redcliffe Press distinctive has been
the way it reflects its creator’s personal passions and his extraordinary
commitment to, and belief, in the book and authors he publishes.

‘Now it is the University’s turn to add its tribute to a
remarkable and distinguished citizen for what he has contributed to learning, the arts and the community.’

To order a copy, or for more information, visit our website http://www.sansomandcompany.co.uk or contact us on 0117 9737207

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/reviews/Bristol-Safari.html#cr

We are launching Floating Harbour by Tony D’Arpino on Thursday, June 30 6.30-800 at the Arnolfini, Narrow Quay, Bristol.

Please telephone 0117 9737207 if you’d like to come along.