When subculture enters the gallery

Goldsmiths Comic Con
Installation, Participatory Art

Goldsmiths Comic Con is my degree show work for BA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. The work was situated at the entrance of St James Hatcham Building, causing visitors to the degree show to pass through a comic convention before seeing the “finer arts”. By bringing a comic convention into an art gallery space, I challenge traditional hierarchies that position “high art” above popular culture, inviting viewers to reconsider what is valued within institutional art spaces. By staging a comic convention, often associated with fandom, commerce, and mass entertainment at the threshold of the gallery, the work disrupts expectations and reframes entry into the degree show as who art is for, blurring distinctions between audience and participant, and between spectacle and critique. It foregrounds the legitimacy of subcultures and challenges the exclusivity that define contemporary art contexts, proposing a more inclusive and pluralistic understanding of artistic value.