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Thoughts on Exit Through the Gift Shop

JA July 19

First up, the requisite spoiler alert. There’s no real cliffhanger to give away at the end of this film, but still, if you’d rather be taken along for the ride, here’s your out, plus a trailer to whet your appetite:

After three aborted attempts (almost all session at ACMI were sold out last month), I finally managed to catch a lazy afternoon session of Exit at Cinema Nova. For those who don’t know, this is loosely pitched as a documentary on street art on or by the elusive Banksy (remember that famous rat stencil that the Melbourne City Council accidentally ‘cleaned up’ at Hosier Lane?).

Having read one or two reviews, I was somewhat clued-up to the fact that the film was not going to be altogether straight-laced, but was unsure about the particulars. Exit starts out predictably enough, introducing us to the larger-than-life character of Thierry Guetta, a French, LA-based shopkeeper who is never without his hand-held video camera. In retrospect, there’s a clever foreshadowing about fads, art and hype here – Thierry runs a business which effectively buys second-hand T-shirts for next to nothing, and then resells them as ‘branded vintage’ for hundreds of dollars a pop.

At this point, you’re still largely happy to go along with the documentary genre – Thierry’s nauseatingly haphazard camera style is enough to convince you that this is still the raw footage of an amateur filmmaker. Gradually, as his obsession with recording everything around him grows, we are gently but surely pushed into the world of street art via Thierry’s cousin, who also happens to be Space Invader. Some extra googling reveals that Space Invader’s pixelated, mosaic-style street art features all over the world, even in Melbourne. Keep a lookout next time you’re up this high over Fed Square.

The domino-effect continues and Thierry soon crosses paths with Shephard Fairey, who is widely known for his Barack Obama, ‘propagandist’ style ‘HOPE’ and ‘PROGRESS’ posters. Exit, though, largely focuses on his OBEY campaign, which began in the 1990s and saw countless posters of Andre the Giant get plastered around LA (the inner Princess Bride fan in me has to point out that yes, that is Fezzik). We learn that Fairey likes to experiment with meaningless repetition, or rather how people perceive visuals with no obvious purpose or meaning, drawing in turn from Heidegger’s theory of Phenomenology, or ‘the process of letting things manifest themselves’.

The deeper Thierry goes (with much humour and clumsiness), the more he becomes fixated with tracking down and filming the infamous, and immensely secretive, Banksy. I’d only vaguely known of Banksy previously, and many will probably recall the name from the Hosier Lane debacle earlier this year, but the film quickly reveals some amazing images of his work, particularly his controversial stencils on the West Bank wall.

The insight into just how some of these pieces get made has been a big talking point of the film, and it’s easy to see why. There’s a physicality involved in terms of getting to the best spots and vantage points – rootops, brick walls, bridges etc – almost reminiscent of pakour. Prints are blown up into huge posters, often in two or three parts, and then fitted together like puzzle pieces. Brooms double as big gluing brushes, the backpack becomes an essential.

Later, as Thierry branches out into making street art himself, we begin to realise that this documentary might be more than a little tongue-in-cheek. He dubs himself ‘Mr Brainwash’, or MBW, and sets out on creating a monstrous exhibition of his own works, made of course by a team of hired minions, to be shown in a gigantic abandoned building in LA. It’s clear from the outset that he’s borrowed and spliced from all the artists he’s filmed, and more besides, including Andy Warhol. While the movie drops in pace somewhat, we can now recognise the farce. The exhibition takes on a life of it’s own – going from chaos to a hyped, frenzied success. Art is churned out like a production line and then sold off in bulk.

Thierry, we can see now, is a hapless and hopeless reflection on how the street art world has been transformed in the past few years. What used to find its roots in illegality now sits somewhat uncomfortably between commercialism and dissent. Works are sold from six figures sums at auctions, with art enthusiasts now hoping to add a ‘Banksy’ to their collections. In 2008, even a London wall with one of his stencils was sold for $500 000 on ebay. Street art once suffered from the burdensome ‘is this art?’ question that gaming now seems to be contending with. But things have, for better or worse, changed. It is this transition that Exit Through the Gift Shop really wants to satirise and poke fun at – what happens when something that once staked it’s reputation illegality now becomes lauded, protected and even, dare we say it, gentrified? Mind you, this is always done with a prankster’s sense of humour.

You could do your head in trying to work out where the documentary ends and the fiction begins, but that I suppose that’s besides the point. I found out later that Banksy directed it, which pretty much gives you your answer right there. It’s interesting as well to see that the joke does run pretty far. Margaret Pomeranz, who gave the film a healthy 3 ½ stars, admitted that she googled Thierry afterwards and found that he did in fact host a hugely successful exhibition in LA. Of course, I went ahead and did the same – this LA Weekly article, which was made much of in the film, is pretty hilarious in retrospect, especially given the highly debated the comments section.

 

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