‘What is Art?’ I suspect is a question, referenced in thousands of dissertations, hundreds of professional exhibitions, and the title of a good few graduate exhibitions every year. Clearly the question itself is not as simple as it sounds. What’s the point? Apparently the thing that makes something, anything… ‘art’ is the lack of a point. Apparently the only qualifying factor is that its only one purpose is itself.  Obviously this is bollocks. A fine sounding collection of words which, when put together in that order, transform into shit. More often than not it’s shit spewing from the mouth of an overeducated, original thought-less member of the literary aristocrate.

Of course there’s a point. There’s always a point. It could just be to look good, but nowadays with so many other things available for one’s eye to gorge on, as an artist, you need to offer slightly more. Often you need to encourage an idea or a feeling in the mind or body of the viewer. This is where political art, and installations become popular.

Exit Through the Gift Shop looks at the currently spotlit corner of the art world, reserved for trendy street artists. Marketing spiel tells us it’s simply a collection of handheld footage of street artists at work, cut together to give an insight into the ‘legal grey-area’s underworld. However the actual cut of the film, credits direction responsibilities to Banksy himself, one of the main characters of both the street-art-world and unsurprisingly therefore, the film. As Banksy himself (always shot either in silhouette, from behind of just pixelated) tells us (from underneath a voice filter).

If he is to be believed, Banksy starts things off by telling us about this guy, Thierry Guetta. Thierry’s a French family man, lives in L.A, and he owns a vintage clothes shop. Due to a reason explained later on, Thierry carries a recording camcorder everywhere he goes. It records every single moment of his waking life. (Seriously. Eating, driving, pissing, everything – I’m not even sure if his wife manages to convince him to turn it off for sex, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Although none of the footage is shown here of course). So Thierry, Harry Hill’s go to guy for footage of a fat balding uncle getting hit in the cubes with a baseball bat at a family barbecue, meets up with his aptly nicknamed cousin ‘Space Invader’ on a holiday in Paris. Invader has an idea to make some art from bathroom tiles, and stick them around Parisian buildings.

From this point, Thierry can’t get enough. He meets, follows, helps and of course, films all the street artists he can as he decides to make a street art documentary. As he gets further into it, he starts to realise his documentary will never be complete without the biggest name of all, king of the stencil and spray can, Banksy. Luckily the two are introduced, and become best buds.

At some point Banksy cottons on to just how special Thierry is, and starts to use the footage himself to construct a documentary about Thierry himself. But the real documentary is not into Banksy’s work, nor Thierry, or any other individual artists. It feels more like an explanation to the world of what street art is. The point of it, defending it, and why it’s not ‘just graffiti’. The whole thing feels like an episode of Hustle with plot twists, deception, and betrayal. In my own opinion, I don’t quite believe it. It makes more sense to me that Thierry simply isn’t real. He’s an actor (or just someone acting)… and the whole situation has been invented for Banksy and people like him to put certain records straight.

Either way, it doesn’t matter. The message is the same. Street art is explained, Banksy is explained. He’s an incredibly down to earth, really lovely, friendly guy (even when he’s being fucked over). He’s also really (partly due to editing), really funny.

On any level, Exit Through the Gift Shop delivers. It features some work, but doesn’t smack you in the face with it, it’s not a 90 minute visual exhibition. It’s interesting, surprising, clever, exciting, and genuinely laugh out loud funny. Sounds like I’m surprised but I shouldn’t be, it’s everything you could say about any other ‘Banksy’.