Is beauty a good thing? Does ‘looking nice’ and ‘making things pretty’ have the same relevance outside our safe and secure western parameters? As reported in virtually every broadsheet and news channel, Banksy moved his yearly Santa’s Ghetto exhibit out of East London this year to the West Bank in an effort to avoid London’s burgeoning gun-crime culture. But does a lick of paint and a splash of colour actually do the Palestinians any good, is Banksy just an over-hyped vandal, should he just fuck off back to where he came from? You decide.

Those of you out there that have eyes, ears, bum-holes and breathe oxygen will have probably heard of the UK’s #1 graffiti don, underground, art-bloke and all-round subversive genius Banksy. With the Evening Standard, bastion of the underground art movement, mentioning him over thirty-eight times within the last six months of 07, you would be hard-pressed to have slept on this guy.

Work by Palestinian artist Suleiman Mansour

Banksy’s giant picture of a flower on a wall somewhere in Lambeth managed to make headlines across the front pages of the nation’s press when it appeared on 29 Oct last year, beating off an attempted repeat of 05’s disastrous Delhi bombings and the election of Argentina’s first ever female president to make that morning headlines. Where were you when Banksy did a massive picture of a flower on a wall in Lambeth? I was in my house, picking my nose.

Jerusalem by Tawfiq Salsaa. Scale model of Jerusalem carved entirely from memory out of local olive wood . It took three years to complete and then Banksy turned up and stuck a bunch of miniature watch towers all over it. 'Collaboration' would be the nice way to put it, 'a flaming liberty' might be nearer the mark.

His work has elicited serious comparison with artists as influential as Warhol and he is widely respected for being as culturally relevant as the likes of NY’s Keith Haring, Brooklyn’s Jean-Michel Basquiat or Bethlehem’s Jesus Christ to name but a few. So it was perhaps appropriate that this art-college drop-out son-of-a-Butcher made his way out to Bethlehem this Christmas to ‘highlight the Palestinian issue’ with his stencils and gang of balaclava-clad art-phags.

It should also be noted that the exhibition featured work from more than 30 other artists, among them Souleiman Mansour, Abed al Rohan Mousain, Ron English and Sir Peter Blake. Indeed, artists from Ramallah, Gaza and Bethlehem’s Dehaisha refugee camp were well represented. But few of their works went for much.

We spoke to war correspondent Dion Nissenbaum who lives and works out in Palestine to get a better idea of local reaction to the exhibition. He told us:

“Banksy first came here in 2005 to do work on the wall. Tourism in Bethlehem is up this year from last, though down from a high in 2000. I would say that the initiative has generated a lot of interest among internationals from the UN, aid groups and others living here. The mayor of Bethlehem supports the idea as a way to lure more tourists.

“Among Palestinians in Bethlehem, I would say there is a mix of views. Some support the project and are helping to put it on. Others took away the wrong message from some of the works. For example, some people thought that Banksy's trademark rat with the slingshot was suggesting that Palestinians were rats. Similarly, one person who saw the soldier questioning the donkey thought Banksy was suggesting that Palestinians were donkeys. There are some who think that artists should not use the wall as a canvas because it takes something they see as an ugly outgrowth of the conflict and transforms it into something beautiful.”

Mixed messages

We also spoke to Martyn Nuart, a photographer who went over to pick up some of the works and get some pictures. We thought it was fitting, as this was kind of the point of the exhibition (to highlight the suffering and injustice that goes on in one of the poorest countries in the world to overpaid media-twats from Hoxton): Martyn  managed to pick up a few bits but  unfortunately wasn't rich and powerful enough to lay his hands on a coveted Banksy.

“I got the coloured trolley on the box ends and made bids on a few other bits. All the originals were being sold through a silent auction. One guy strolled in and made two bids on the Banksy pieces, $130, 000 dollars on each piece! Alright for some I guess.”

THANKS DION NISSENBAUM. THANKS MARTYN NUART. 

What do you think? Comments below please.

All proceeds from the exhibition go to a charity, but as yet nobody has decided what that charity will be. Peep santasghetto.org for deets.