Dismaland: A Hyperreal Playground for The Everyday Cynic

      The art gallery come theme park curated by Banksy and 50 other artists has now closed it doors to the hoards of hipsters who flocked the seaside town of Western Super Mare. Highlights included; a miniature town complete with sirens, riots and police vans, remote control boat loads of refugees (some floated eerily in the surrounding water) and a performing (model) killer whale leaping from a toilet. Ticket prices reached £6000 on eBay and the new burst in tourism offered up an impressive £20million for the town. Once dismantled, the instalment materials will be taken to the Calais Refugee Camp to help build shelter.

   The exhibition itself is a huge tangle of examples of hyperreal in theory and in practice. The irony surrounding the instalment is huge. Theme parks are built as distractions, entertainment and escapism from what is going on in the world, in this instance however the distraction has taken on the form of what is happening in society currently. This refugees, for example, seemed a very fresh example of this, some could say it's a little close to the line following the images in the papers. But how else do we raise awareness. Some of the other pieces aren't necessarily as current, the Cinderella carriage crash? Could it be Diana? The hoards of photographers trying to capture every grisly detail.

    However you interpret it, it is an example of hyperreality in popular culture today, an ironic simulation of events which have happened are happening. A micro universe.