Outsider art inside... Mural by Shepard Fairey, part of Baltic's Spank the Monkey exhibition. Photograph: Colin Davison
A spate of mysterious signs has appeared around Newcastle and Gateshead encouraging you to spank the monkey. What can this mean? Is it some form of coordinated campaign to promote masturbation throughout the north-east? Or an unprovoked incitement to acts of simian violence? No: Spank the Monkey turns out to be about guerrilla art rather than gorilla abuse - Baltic, the gallery responsible for the show, claims it to be the first major international exhibition of urban art.
Gallery directors are always trying to prove that they're in tune with the cutting edge, yet the attempt to embrace urban art is bound to look like some groovy dad attempting to embrace their kid's music collection. Spank the Monkey is an embarrassing title for a truly embarrassing exhibition: "It's about breaking ground in the art world, throwing a name out that's really in your face," says Baltic director Peter Dorochenko. When the head of a large arts organisation enthuses about something being in your face, it can only confirm the suspicion that the real street artists are out there tagging, while institutions like Baltic are merely tagging along.
Besides which, the content isn't in your face - it's practically impossible to find. Sure, there is a whole floor of the gallery given over to a skate ramp (installed by Japanese collective Groovisions) and a glass case containing a Takashi Murakami-designed Louis Vuitton handbag, which tells you everything about the commoditisation of urban art you need to know. There's also a gratuitous display of gynaecological polaroids by Yasumasa Yonehara entitled Get Naked And Bend Over! I'm Serious! Anyone with an explanation as to what such rank, low-grade pornography is doing in a public gallery is invited to contact this site.
Yet surely the whole point of outsider art is that it should be, well, outside. Baltic claims to have this covered with a city-wide programme of exhibits, navigable by SMS. The idea is, you bump into something weird, which comes with a number to text which explains what the weird thing is and directions to where the next weird thing may be found. The highlight is an exciting new "intervention" by the fabled Banksy "at an undisclosed location, somewhere in Newcastle".
So I set off, mobile in hand, for an afternoon of satellite-assisted artistic orienteering, only to be told by a rather red-faced gallery spokesperson that it isn't actually working yet (problems with the signage, apparently). Undeterred, I strike out with a rather less technologically sophisticated sheet of directions, determined to see what havoc Banksy has wrought on the people of Newcastle. Except that enquiries about this cause the spokesperson to look even more uncomfortable. At the present moment, the undisclosed location remains so undisclosed that Baltic is unable to disclose it. They're hoping that something will occur within the next month, but can't say anything certain. "You mean to say, Banksy hasn't actually done anything?" I ask. "No - he's supposed be doing something, but it's in the process of negotiation and we won't be advertising it as part of the main programme," comes the reply, which rather contradicts all the claims made in the advance publicity for the show.
And yet maybe Banksy's apparent no-show could turn out to be Baltic's most significant coup. The artist's website states that he "has exhibited in the British Museum, the Louvre, the Tate and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. None of whom invited him". So it stands to reason that the invitation to take part in the Baltic show is a cast-iron guarantee that he wouldn't turn up. If anyone does come across something by Banksy on the street of Newcastle in the next few weeks, do let us know. But it seems increasingly unlikely. After all, when institutions such as Baltic stage international surveys of graffiti art, the writing really is on the wall.
~ Spank the Monkey runs until Jan 7
