As discussed in our recent podcast on economics and everyday life, this June will see the opening of Show Me the Money: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Arts in Sunderland before the exhibition tours later in the year. The blog post below provides a full outline of the exhibition, including information about the specific artworks on display.

Show Me the Money: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present is the first in depth exploration of the visual culture of the financial world from historical illustrations, prints, cartoons and games to contemporary painting, photography, video and installation. Situated amongst the artworks are stock tickers and charts, bank advertisements, Occupy posters, electronic trading systems, currency, corporate archive material and other instruments of financial exchange. The exhibition raises questions about what ‘the market’ looks like, what money really stands for, and how the abstractions of high finance can be made visible.

Touring to Sunderland, Southampton and Alton, and Manchester, Show Me the Money reflects a particular financial narrative in each region: the Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art (NGCA) is close to the Head Office of Northern Rock whose collapse in 2008 signalled the beginning of the British financial crisis; Chawton House Library in Hampshire was once owned by Jane Austen’s brother, himself implicated in a financial scandal of the 1810s; and the People’s History Museum in Manchester houses material history from the union and co-operative movements, and is located close to the Co‐op Headquarters, whose financial arm is in turmoil.

New commissions opening at NGCA include Simon Roberts’ Let This Be A Sign, a room­‐ scale installation bringing together a triptych of photographs contrasting the freneticism of the trading floor with the stately calm of the boardroom and incorporates a new version of Credit Crunch Lexicon, a poetic text work covering an entire wall that lists alphabetically words and phrases collated from political speeches, Bank of England papers, newspaper headlines, protest posters and economic reports. Roberts also re-presents found images massing together a compendium of photographs all of which feature ‘brokers with hands on their faces’. Jane Lawson’s The Detoxification of Capitalism and Freedom is a time-lapse video of her symbolic detoxification, transformation and destruction – using oyster mushrooms – of books and portraits referencing the institutions of the neo-­liberal global financial system. Immo Klink’s new series of photographs, for both monumental banners and intimate prints, are displayed across the NGCA, presenting a vivid contrast between the grotesque stereotypes peddled by news media of ‘bankers at play’ and the true demographic diversity found in the City of London.

In a special commission for NGCA, Neil Bromwich and Zoe Walker’s A Game For Change imagines an island on which deals around the economy, the environment, society and individual wealth are negotiated by the players.

Later in 2014, at John Hansard Gallery, Cornford & Cross’ new commission explores the workings of ‘the market’ by drawing on natural and technological metaphors, creating a fantastical computer-­‐generated three-­‐dimensional landscape that dramatises the virtualisation of money. The work draws on research conducted with London School of Economics and American Express.

Show Me the Money showcases many UK premieres of works created since the 2008 financial crash – including Molly Crabapple’s Debt and Her Debtors (2012-13), from the “Shell Game” series of large surreal oil paintings that include the mortgage bubble, the Greek anti-­‐austerity protests, and Occupy Wall Street; Goldin + Senneby’s Headless (2008), their search for a specific offshore company registered in the Bahamas that forms the basis for a ghostwritten novel commissioned by the artists; and Cash Point (2008), Wolfgang Weileder’s cash machine that randomly dispenses a £5 note every day at a computer chosen time. Other UK premieres include Robin Bhattacharya’s installation The Robin Currency™ featuring a fully functioning currency system; and Thomas Gokey’s $49,983: total amount of money rendered in exchange for a Master of Fine Art Degree to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, pulped into four sheets of paper (2012), that the artist sells for $5 per square inch.

Show Me the Money also presents other key works such as Rhiannon Williams’ My Loss Is My Loss (2001-11), comprising a patchwork paper quilt of lottery tickets bought over ten years; Bill Balaskas’ The Market Will Save Us (2013), a 23 metre-long banner of extravagant financial promises in religious rhetoric style, and Carey Young’s video I am a Revolutionary (2001).

Woven into the contemporary presentations are historical prints and objects including eighteenth-century prints by William Hogarth, James Gillray and George Cruikshank, the leading graphic artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Cruikshank’s satirical reworking of a Bank of England note in protest against draconian anti‐forgery legislation helped provoke a change in law, and gathered mass crowds on its public display. Archive ephemera from Barclays, TSB and other banks are shown with nineteenth‐century American cartoons, and historical board games created to give the public an insight into the realm of finance. On the website for the exhibition (imageoffinance.com), an interactive game in the style of a newspaper beauty contest, is modeled on J M Keynes famous description of how the stock market operates and a special Show Me the Money app for children includes games such as ‘design your own bank note’, ‘dress for success’ and ‘bulls and bears’.

Show Me the Money: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present is accompanied by a fully illustrated 164pp book published by Manchester University Press, edited by Peter Knight, Nicky Marsh and Paul Crosthwaite. It presents professional, anthropological, political, historical, literary and artistic contexts for the show, with contributions from Justin Fox, Andy Haldane, Ben Lewis, Bill Maurer, Alex Preston, Alistair Robinson, Isabella Streffen and the editors.

Show Me the Money: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present is initiated and curated by Peter Knight, Manchester University, Nicky Marsh, Southampton University, Paul Crosthwaite, Edinburgh University and Isabella Streffen, Oxford Brookes University. Funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) with support from the University of Manchester, University of Edinburgh and University of Southampton.

Showing at:
Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (13th June 2014 – 30th August 2014)
John Hansard Gallery & Chawton House Library (19th September 2014 – 22nd October 2014)
People’s History Museum (11th July 2015 – 25th February 2016)

Website: www.imageoffinance.com
Twitter: @imageoffinance

Tags: art, Finance, popular culture