Lithographic exhibition poster
59 × 42 cm
Edition size unknown
2009
In the summer of 2009, the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery was taken over by an extraordinary exhibition by the notorious local artist. Overnight, the museum transformed into a surreal cabinet of curiosities dedicated to "unnatural history": fish fingers swam in a goldfish bowl, while hot dogs and chicken nuggets popped up throughout the exhibition rooms. Banksy’s paintings were placed among the Old Masters, and sculptures and objects appeared seemingly at random, creating deliberate contradictions within the existing museum collections.
The main entrance was redesigned into a sculpture hall accompanied by a burnt-out ice cream van, which emitted an eerie soundtrack of distorted melodies while a giant melting ice cream sat on its roof.
The exhibition immediately became an overwhelming success, with visitors sometimes waiting up to seven hours to become part of this unique phenomenon. Over a hundred works by the artist were displayed, most of which had never been publicly exhibited before.
