The Art World

Watched the highly entertaining Exit through the Gift Shop on DVD tonight. Purporting to be a Banksy film, it is and it isn't. It's actually more about a French guy called Thierry Guetta who hangs around with grafitti artists in LA, filming their escapades, before finally meeting his hero, Banksy. The fact that Banksy lets him film away, albeit never revealing his face, gives the game away a bit. His thousands of hours of video footage turn out to be unwatchable so on Banksy's advice he becomes Mr Brainwash, an artist in his own right, becoming an overnight sensation. It's a mockumentary, a comment on the silliness of the art market. And Banksy? He comes out of it OK, watching - indeed dictating - events as they get increasingly absurd, his face hooded and voice altered, from the safety of his anonymous studio... having a laugh at it all.