Banksy? I’ve never understood the hype

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This was published 3 years ago

Banksy? I’ve never understood the hype

By Oslo Davis

Here, illustrator and author Oslo Davis counts his top 10 cultural touchstones, from that naked scene he can't unsee to a late-night encounter with Japanese monkeys. Just don't get him started on street artist Banksy, whose work recently sold for £7.6 million ($13.9 million) at Sotheby's in London.

In his own words, and exclusive drawings, Davis explores – in surprising depth – the things that helped make him the man he is, and wonders whatever happened to those tram safety barriers.

Oslo is not a Banksy fan.

Oslo is not a Banksy fan.Credit: Oslo Davis

The artwork that left you scratching your head Almost everything by Banksy. Some of my best friends are Banksy fans, but I've never understood the hype. His political leanings are, of course, spot on, but is he doing anything new? Cheeky Mad Magazine artists have been doing his level of satire for years. Is he popular because he makes street art and that makes him edgy? Or is it because his visual ideas occupy that sweet spot between not too clever and not too basic?

As an image maker myself I'm conscious that this sounds like sour grapes. And heck, I'm more than a little jealous Banksy has found a way to create work that at least feels meaningful, is kind of funny, and will more than pay off his mortgage. But I can't help thinking hundreds of other workaday artists, newspaper op-ed illustrators and graphic designers do smarter, wittier and artful stuff everyday. I'll shut up now.

Davis' favourite book" Flann O’Brien’s <i>The Third Policeman</i>.

Davis' favourite book" Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman.Credit: Oslo Davis

The scene Oslo can't unsee.

The scene Oslo can't unsee.Credit: Oslo Davis

The book that you always return to
I gave a copy of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman to a friend who said he loved it but years later admitted he couldn't get past the first chapter. Same with me, but on my second attempt I discovered the book opens and reveals itself as a truly satisfying, and ludicrous, little gem.

Published in 1967 and set in rural Ireland, The Third Policeman follows the tribulations of a one-legged man who encounters a surreal, nonsensical world as he searches for a box of money. Along the way oddball characters confuse and thwart his mission – it's a bit like an existential Alice in Wonderland – such as a policeman who lusts after bicycles, a tinkerer who creates needles so sharp you can neither see nor feel their ends, and a crackpot savant who attempts to dilute water. Like the films of Charlie Kaufman, The Third Policeman is a panacea for the straightness of modern life.

The scene you can't unsee
The naked party scene in the 2016 film Toni Erdmann. Conservative businesswoman Ines has invited colleagues, including her boss, to a party in her apartment. But before they arrive she struggles and fails to put on impossibly tight cocktail dress. When the doorbell rings Ines is so flustered and fed up she chucks the dress away and answers the door stark naked, welcoming her colleagues to her "naked party". Ines' colleagues are gobsmacked yet too polite to refuse, so they also strip off. It's peak cringe viewing, made to seem completely plausible by director Maren Ade. I've only ever watched this scene through the gaps between my fingers.

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The building that most amazed Oslo.

The building that most amazed Oslo.Credit: Oslo Davis

The building that most amazed you
I once stayed at one of those creepy old hotels in the mountains of central Japan. I remember I found the place after a day hiking around the forests outside Yudanaka, in northern Nagano, talking photos of cats and old snow etc, pretending I was in a Murakami novel. From the road the minshuku was barely distinguishable in the evening gloom – the power was out everywhere that evening – but I could see that it was a multi-storied ramshackle building, its mass somehow defying gravity hanging out from the steep side of a gully. It looked abandoned, like something you see in an arty photobook about abandoned Japanese hotels, but when I knocked on the door an elderly couple with head torches welcomed me in. I was the only guest. They fed me a cracking meal of forest mushrooms, home-grown veggies and river fish before retiring to their granny flat, leaving me to look around with my torch.

The film that kept Oslo awake - <i>The Orphanage</i>.

The film that kept Oslo awake - The Orphanage.Credit: Oslo Davis

The first thing I noticed was the floorboards were all skewiff. The hallways, which were ominously lined with cans of insect repellent, seemed to not line up or follow any conventional building logic. I found it tricky to distinguish a wall from a door, which was often jammed or out of whack with its frame. In the half-dark it felt as if the building was denying me any sense of perspective or scale. I assumed its wonkiness was from years of rattling earthquakes, or could I have been tripping on the mushrooms? It felt entirely plausible Sadako from The Ring would come at me from around a corner, dragging her decrepit corpse along the splintered floorboards.

After ages walking around I found the onsen and stripped off in the dark and slid the door open to the bathroom. But the door opened to a stone path outside that led to a hot spring completely overrun by a troop of chunky Japanese macaque monkeys. When the filthy creatures saw me standing there naked in the moonlight it was as if I'd interrupted a witches' seance: they whipped their heads around and peeled back their lips revealing menacing incisors and let out a gut-piercing screech I still wake up to in the middle of the night years later.

The film that kept you awake
The Orphanage (2007) directed by Spaniard J. A. Bayona. My wife and I have always liked to scare the bejesus out of the kids by introducing them to the horror films we love. Nothing too grizzly, but scary enough to rattle rather than traumatise them. We're still debating whether or not to show them The Orphanage. Roughly, the film centres on Laura and her family, who move into the building where she grew up, a former orphanage. After an argument, her son Simón goes missing, and in her desperate search Laura comes face to face with the orphanage's disturbing past. It's quintessential melodramatic Spanish horror. The scene with a medium communing with the dead is especially bone-chilling.

The character he'd most like to be: unnamed character in <i>The Man Without A Past</i>.

The character he'd most like to be: unnamed character in The Man Without A Past.Credit: Oslo Davis

The character you'd most like to be
The unnamed character in Aki Kaurismäki's 2002 film The Man Without A Past, who wakes from a coma with no memory of who he is. Well, I don't know if I'd really like that to happen to me, but I kind of like the idea of being given the opportunity to start afresh. Not that I've done anything terrible or I want to abandon my family or anything like that. But there is some attraction in being given a clean slate, no? An opportunity to reinvent oneself? If it was possible, what sort of person would we become, and how much of our old self would feature in the new version? Would I still occasionally jiggle one of my legs, or get annoyed when someone whistles I Am Australian, for example?

The tree-lined streets from the Old Quarter of Hanoi.

The tree-lined streets from the Old Quarter of Hanoi.Credit: Oslo Davis

The streetscape you never tire of walking down
In late 1999 I moved to Hanoi, where I lived for four years. I mostly got around on a filthy two-stroke Minsk motorbike, but I never got sick of walking. The tree-lined streets from the Old Quarter out to the Mausoleum where Ho Chi Minh lies in state was a favourite route. These days I wouldn't recommended it – too much carbon monoxide and honking – but back then you could still amble up Dien Bien Phu boulevard in relative peace. The best time of course was before sunrise, before the Hondas hit the streets. I'd walk up past the statue of Lenin and the beautiful old yellow and green French colonial buildings to the Presidential Palace and then loop back to the Old Quarter via Phan Dinh Phung street. I'd often stop for pho, then relax in a wicker chair and take in the world with an ice coffee, a couple of drags on a thouc lao raw tobacco pipe and, if offered, a shot of vodka, just to get the day started.

The song he'll never tire of hearing:  the B-side medley on <i>Abbey Road</i>.

The song he'll never tire of hearing: the B-side medley on Abbey Road.Credit: Oslo Davis

The song you'll never tire of hearing
My wife and I slow-danced to Say You, Say Me by Lionel Richie at our wedding, so maybe that one? JOKING! I hate that song. Actually is there any song anyone wouldn't get sick of eventually? Still, I'll willingly return to the medley on side B of Abbey Road, but only if I have about 12 months break between listenings. Specifically, Paul's singing across Bathroom Window, Golden Slumbers and Carry That Weight still sounds exceptional 50 years since its release.

Most parents will know the thrill of introducing beloved music to their kids, and Abbey Road has soundtracked many of our family roadtrips. Similarly, in 2012 when I told my kids that Maurice Sendak had died, my then seven-year-old daughter replied, horrified, "Morrissey?!" Never felt prouder.

The sculpture that comes to life for you
Would you call those cement yellow tram safety zone prows that used to run up to tram stops "sculptures"? I reckon they are. They got rid of them when they realised they were deathtraps, designed, it seemed, as nifty ramps for cars to launch up and flip over. But I miss them because they were one of few little things that made Melbourne Melbourne, like those No Spitting signs, Whelan The Wrecker trucks and undercover ticket inspectors in brown vinyl jackets.

The Reservoir skatepark has claimed a couple of them, so perhaps their transition from dangerously dysfunctional wedge of cement to beloved city-defining icon is under way. Let's bring a few of them back as yellow sculptures – we just need to agree on where to put them.

The book that changed Oslo's life.

The book that changed Oslo's life.Credit: Oslo Davis

The book that changed the way you saw the world
When I was an eight-year-old Christian in 1979 some of my extended family used to go on and on about The Late, Great Planet Earth, a prophecy book by Hal Lindsey and Carole C. Carlson. It has sold more than 28 million copies. I remember one day watching Viv Richards and Michael Holding demolish Australia at the MCG on TV, while in the background my Christian family was engaging in an animated conversation about the rapture.

The book was too dense for me to read, but I got the gist of it. It stated that famines, natural disasters and wars were all due to hit us in the 1980s, and this would predicate the Second Coming of Christ. And so for a few months there I seriously thought our saviour would return, which was exciting, I guess, as long as it didn't happen before the third test in Adelaide.

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