R. Flagg “Kingdom of Champions”

Jack Hanley

poster for R. Flagg “Kingdom of Champions”

This event has ended.

R. Flagg’s work considers the history of fandom, which is an organised subculture of communities that deeply interact around certain genres of popular culture. He is particularly interested in the artwork produced by fandom communities in the 20th century that originally appeared in printed publications. The artist’s ongoing research from his personal collection of over 40,000 items particularly focuses on the fandom surrounding comic books, pulp magazines, fantasy and science fiction novels, and role playing games from the 1930s-1980s. He often makes recreations of artworks that originally appeared in printed publications from the last century, many of which were made by amateur and anonymous artists who were never credited at the time and are now forgotten.

The artist is also interested in indexes and archives of popular culture that were created by fan communities in the 20th century. Whilst online databases exist today for every conceivable topic, these older indexes that predated the Internet were painstakingly and obsessively created through extensive research and released in cheaply made, small print-runs and distributed to, shared and exchanged with other like-minded fans. R. Flagg sees the fandom and fan culture that existed in the 1930s-1980s as being the precursor of blogs and social networks that flourish online today - which is the formation of communities and networks based around shared interests.

Media

Schedule

from May 26, 2016 to June 26, 2016

Opening Reception on 2016-05-26 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

R. Flagg

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