Phantasmagoria

Andrew James, James Unsworth, Anwot, Isaac Cordal, Martin Wollerstam, Jon Burgerman, Shin Tanaka, Rebecca Strickson, David Shillinglaw, Agent Provocateur, Todd Ryan White, Roman Klonek, Otto Schade, Dave Anderson and Boicut.

Phantasmagoria is themed around ongoing cycles of sub-cultures and counter cultures, their art, and it’s eventual fuelling of canons of mass assimilation by fashion and media to the point of vulgarity.

In 1990 a relatively unknown Canadian essayist Gail Faurschou wrote about fashion’s “ingenious strategy of expansion.” As more artistic raw material that challenges corporate consumerism is made, the more marketable material corporations have to advertise its products. This systematic diffusion of any opposition continues to effectively dissolve and quash any of its subject’s capacity for growth and maturity.

The demand and desire for the “new” results in a Phantasmagoria of commercial imagery.

In the 1980’s Nike launched a commercial campaign, using the Beatle’s 1960’s “Revolution,” which resulted in a legal battle to stop the corporations use of material that they once feared inspired a generation of demonstrations against it.