Tourism body Visit Somerset said Friday the exhibition had brought 20 million pounds ($30 million) to a region that has struggled since foreign vacations replaced local seaside holidays for many Britons.
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Banksy’s Dismaland, his dystopian version of a Disney theme park in a rundown English seaside town, will be dismantled and all fixtures will be sent to the refugee camp to build shelters near Calais, France.
In a simple, final message on the theme park’s website, its creator Banksy said: “Coming soon…”
The art installation, styled as a mock theme park, opened at Weston-super-Mare in Somerset last month and was visited by 150,000 people.
4,000 tickets a day were sold online for the temporary art show, the brainchild of the famously secretive and elusive street artist from Bristol. Among the attractions were an anarchist training camp, a merry-go-round with a butcher poised to dismember a carousel horse, and paparazzi swarming the wreck of Cinderella’s carriage.
This piece by Banksy at “Dismaland” appears to show migrants crowded into a boat.
When Banksy’s anti-capitalist show Dismaland closes its doors on Sunday, the irony that it will have generated an estimated £20m in extra revenue for its surrounding area has not been lost on traders.
Wayne Entwhistle, the manager of the Grand Atlantic hotel, which overlooks Dismaland, said “People have called us up for bookings from Hong Kong, America, Austria, Canada, and that’s never happened before”. “It’s modeled on those failed Christmas parks that pop up every December – where they stick a few antlers on an Alsatian dog and spray fake snow on a skip”.
“It’s ambitious, but it’s also crap”.
Could it all be for show and speculation or do we think the anonymous artist may actually be there?
Visitors entered the theme park, which features work by dozens of artists, through a security check made from cardboard by Bill Barminski.
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Workers began dismantling Dismaland today, a process expected to take three weeks.
