The brochure for Banksy’s Dimaland touts “a festival of art, amusements and entry-level anarchism.” Weston-super-Mare, the somewhat downcast seaside resort town near his hometown of Bristol, England, provides a big canvas for a small town art intervention.  Banksy, not known to drop a theme, transplants a Disney-styled urban imagery, to create a contextually odd art experiment.

In Fall 2013, Banksy decamped to New York City for a month-long artist residency. Each morning a photograph of a new, unlocated piece was posted to his website spawning a frantic, citywide scavenger hunt to locate, photograph and in some cases appropriate the new work.

Much of the art at Dismaland is displayed in a traditional gallery setting.  The Grim Reaper in a bumper car formerly unveiled during his New York residency, makes a back-from-the-dead appearance.  However, the new context seems less political and more like a haunted playland effect. The park works hard to create a mash up of art and urban detritus. The Tiki bar might have been plucked from the yard at Secret Project Robot in Bushwick. As a theme park, it is less dismal than bemusing, and portrays ambiguous voices, sometimes dark and funny, sometimes beautiful and depressing.