Photos of Banksy's pop-up cinema, Lambeth Palace
See inside the underground venue showing his film, 'Exit Through the Gift Shop'
Ahead of Banksy's exclusive Time Out takeover, we took a look around London's newest, darkest and dirtiest cinema, Lambeth Palace. Situated under hip intersection Waterloo train station and featuring surround sound street art, it will be showing Banksy's film 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' until March 4 (tickets are sold out, more details here)
See next week's Time Out for Banksy's takeover and get your hands on an exclusive new work - yours with every copy of the magazine. Pre-order yours here.
Words by Ossian Ward, photography by Rob Greig
Not content with branching out into filmmaking, the ever-resourceful Banksy has built a pop-up cinema to show his work. Before ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’ opened nationwide, Banksy and friends built an underground
cinema, nicknamed ‘The Lambeth Palace’, in order to screen, for one week only, public previews of the film.
The ad-hoc 150-seater hosted perhaps the grimiest film premiere in history on Monday March 1 when the likes of Rhys Ifans, who narrates the film, were seen sashaying down a most unusual red carpet – one that had been hastily painted on the road in dripping red paint.
Making good use of the same disused arches and tunnels in Leake Street under Waterloo Station that hosted his 2008 ‘Cans Festival’ exhibition, Banksy also installed a burnt-out Mr Whippy van selling popcorn and cinema snacks, as well as his vitrines of disturbingly squirming animated hot dogs that featured in his fake ‘Pet Store’ show in New York. There was also a flickering bonfire fuelled by old master canvases and a mural of the Queen unveiling an ‘A’ for anarchy scrawl on the bare brick wall.
Braving the damp conditions and ignoring warnings that drips might fall on visitors every time a train went overhead, those going to see the film in these atmospheric but insalubrious conditions were rewarded with free spraycans, dispensed by a girl dressed as an ice-cream seller, and encouraged to tag up the walls outside. Obviously, Time Out doesn’t condone such mindless vandalism and we’ve since washed our paint-splattered hands of any evidence pointing to the contrary.
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