IT was always going to be a bit of a long shot.
Banksy, probably the world’s best known graffiti artist, had been nominated for a Sky Arts South Bank award for his “bemusement park” Dismaland.
The Brighton-based anti-Disneyland opened in a derelict lido in Weston-super-Mare in Somerset lastAugust. Attractions included migrant boats and an anarchist training camp. The whole place was eventually dismantled and sent to Calais to provide shelter for migrants.
Ahead of yesterday’s ceremony the art world was buzzing with the possibility that the secretive artist was going to turn up and reveal him or herself. After 26 years, it seemed that one of the biggest questions in contemporary art might, possibly, maybe, be answered. It wasn’t.
If Banksy was at the Savoy Hotel yesterday afternoon he did not make himself known.
Dismaland also didn’t win the visual arts prize it was nominated in, losing out to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye for Verses After Dusk, a stunning series of portraits at the Serpentine Gallery in London last year.
Other big winners at the awards included Eddie Izzard who won the lifetime achievement and BBC One’s Doctor Foster, which won the best TV prize.
Benjamin Clementine, At Least for Now won the best pop music prize and English rapper Stormzy won the annual Breakthrough Award.
A film about unexpected events forcing a couple to suddenly question their marriage a week ahead of their 45th anniversary, called 45 Years, won the best film prize, and Leeds-based Northern Ballet won the dance prize for their production of George Orwell’s 1984.
Glasgow-based writer, director and animator Sarah Grant was awarded a £30,000 Sky Academy Arts Scholarship to help take her career to the next level.
Phil Edgar Jones, director of Sky Arts, said: “Once again the range of creative talent on show at this year’s South Bank Sky Arts Awards demonstrates the arts are in rude health in the UK. We are delighted to be able to recognise a broad range of incredibly imaginative and talented people – and to announce our next set of Sky Academy scholars who will be receiving a £30,000 bursary, plus mentoring for a year to pursue their chosen practice and set them on the path to winning their own South Bank Sky Arts Awards in the future.”
In 2008, the Mail on Sunday suggested that Banksy was Robin Gunningham, a “nice middle-class boy” from Bristol. Recently their sister paper, the Daily Mail, said scientists at Queen Mary University in London had used science to back up the claim.
Researchers used “geographic profiling” to plot the locations of 192 of Banksy’s presumed artworks. The sites indicated “hot spots” which were narrowed down to pinpoint an individual. Peaks within these clusters correlated to a pub, playing fields and residential addresses closely linked to Gunningham, his friends and family. Banksy representatives have denied that Gunningham is the artist.
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