SHOW ME THE MONEY at John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton

SHOWMETHEMONEY

SHOW ME THE MONEY – The Image of Finance

featuring:

The ROBIN™ Currency

John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ from 7th October until 22nd November 2014.

Open: Tues-Fri 11am-5pm, Sat 11am-4pm. Free. T:0238 059 2158.

John Hansard Gallery is one of Britain’s leading public galleries of contemporary art. Part of the University of Southampton, we support, develop and present work by outstanding artists from across the world. Established in 1979, we are proud to play a dynamic role in the cultural life of Southampton and the region. We’re a place to visit for extraordinary experiences, where you can see and think about the world differently.

www.hansardgallery.org.uk

SHOW ME THE MONEY at Chawton House Library

SHOW ME THE MONEY – The Image of Finance

The failures in the global financial system that occurred in 2008 were experienced as a crisis because they were confusing and chaotic. The causes and implications of the event appeared to be too complex, too impenetrable and too surprising to be understood. The Queen herself – estimated to have lost £25 million in the crash – was reported to have asked, when visiting the London School of Economics that autumn, ‘if this crisis was so large’ then how ‘did everyone miss it?’ As the works presented in Show Me the Money: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present suggest, financial processes are often difficult to see not in spite, but precisely because, of their vast size. Finance – money, investment, credit, debt – is the air we breathe, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to get an objective view of an atmosphere that envelops us so completely.

The images, objects, narratives and artworks that make up this exhibition explore the ways in which finance has become a dazzlingly sophisticated and globally interconnected phenomenon that requires us to think anew about the ways in which we understand time and space: money is instant; it is everywhere and nowhere. Show Me the Money highlights the ways in which art and culture have allowed us to explore the increasingly abstract and self-referential nature of finance, the complexity of its operations that are virtually impossible for those on the outside to envisage. Yet the four locations of the exhibition also suggest ways in which this overarching narrative of finance is complicated by the particularities of place: finance may be everywhere, but its meanings and effects vary markedly from one site to another

featuring:

The ROBIN™ Currency

at Chawton House Library, Chawton, near Alton, Hampshire GU34 1SJ 

from 19th September to 22nd November 2014. 

Chawton House Library is an internationally respected research and learning centre for the study of early women’s writing from 1600 to 1830. Access to the library’s unique collection is for the benefit of scholars and the general public alike. Set in the quintessentially English manor house that once belonged to Jane Austen’s brother, Edward; the library, house and gardens – plus an always fascinating calendar of events – make Chawton House Library a very special and memorable place to visit and enjoy.

www.chawtonhouse.org

SHOW ME THE MONEY: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the presentSHOW ME THE MONEY: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the present

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 Libraryinfo@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 Museumexhibitions@phm.org.uk T 0161 838 9190