The ROBIN™ Currency is honoured to be featured in the exhibition SHOW ME THE MONEY: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the present.
Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art 14 June – 30 August 2014 John Hansard Gallery with Chawton House Library: 19 September / 7 October – 22 November 2014 People’s History Museum: 11 July 2015 – 25 February 2016
Initiated with Dr Peter Knight, Manchester University, Professor Nicky Marsh, Southampton University, Dr Paul Crosthwaite, Edinburgh University, and Dr Isabella Streffen, Manchester University with NGCA.
Show Me The Money asks what does ‘the market’ look like? What does money really stand for? How can the abstractions of high finance be made visible? The exhibition charts how the financial world has been imagined in art, illustration, photography and other visual media over the last three centuries in Britain and the United States. The project asks how artists have grappled with the increasingly intangible and self-referential nature of money and finance, from the South Sea Bubble of the eighteenth century to the global financial crisis of 2008. It features works ranging from satirical eighteenth-century prints by William Hogarth and James Gillray to newly commissioned works by artists Goldin+Senneby, Cornford & Cross, Immo Klink, Simon Roberts, and James O Jenkins, as well as the first UK exhibition of international artists such as Molly Crabapple. The exhibition includes an array of media: paintings, prints, photographs, videos, artefacts, and instruments of financial exchange both ‘real’ and imagined. Indeed the exhibition also charts the development of an array of financial visualisations, including stock tickers and charts, newspaper illustrations, bank adverts, and electronic trading systems.
Show Me The Money demonstrates that the visual culture of finance has not merely reflected prevailing attitudes to money and banking, but has been crucial in forging – and at times critiquing – the very idea of ‘the market’. The exhibition tours three distinct regions of the country, beginning at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, close to the HQ of Northern Rock, where in an English context the financial crisis of 2008 began. It is then shown across two sites simultaneously: John Hansard Gallery, part of Southampton University, and Chawton House Library in Hampshire, which was owned by Jane Austen’s brother, himself implicated in a financial scandal of the 1810s. In 2015 the show continues to the People’s History Museum in Manchester, a national museum that houses material history from the union and co-operative movements.
At www.imageoffinance.com, the website for the exhibition, an interactive game in the style of a newspaper beauty contest, is modelled on JM Keynes famous description of how the stock market operates and an app called “Show Me the Money” is free to download from Apple App Store.
John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ. Open Tues-Fri 11:00-5:00; Saturday 11:00-4:00 W John Hansard Gallery E info@hansardgallery.org.uk T 023 8059 2158
Chawton House Library, Chawton, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 1SJ. Open 10:00-5:00 daily. W Chawton House Library E info@chawton.net T 01420 541010
People’s History Museum, Left Bank, Spinningfields, Manchester, M3 3ER. Open daily 10:00- 5:00 W People’s History Museum E exhibitions@phm.org.uk T 0161 838 9190
