Seven artists explore contemporary notions and perceptions of currency in a new exhibition at the New Westminster New Media Gallery.
Currency is set to run from March 14 to May 10 in the gallery.
It explores the idea of currency in the rapidly changing world of technology.
“These six works reflect the seductive, volatile and sometimes problematic relationships that have developed around currency and value in the early 21st century,” says a press release.
The release notes that “currency” represents both a symbolic system of exchange (such as money, shells or tokens) and a way of being current in the world; if something “has currency,” it has become relevant in some way and has acquired a certain consensus of value in society. Its Latin root speaks to a sense of flowing from one place to another; for example, two currents of water combining and moving forward in a stream “become current.”
Currency as a medium of exchange normally exists within strict boundaries, and those boundaries denote value.
“But, as the works in this exhibition suggest, value and boundaries can change quickly, become contradictory and ephemeral, incorporating liminal notions of place or time,” the release notes.
The Currency exhibition gives viewers opportunities to reflect on the meaning of currency and consider what conditions will affect value: “external influences such as markets and trading, or socio-political influences such as historic or group consensus, issues associated with human labour or new collective forms of currency, or the systematic ways in which luxury goods such as precious stones, perfume, real estate or historic art can accumulate and reflect value systems,” as a write-up about the exhibition notes.
The works use artificial intelligence, internet streaming, diagnostic gas chromatography, block chain, bitsoil and bot systems.
Artists in the show are Fabbio Lattanzi Antinori, Italy; the Larbits Sisters (Bénédicte and Laure-Anne Jacobs), Belgium; Christa Sommerer and Laurent Migonneau, Austria and France; Jonathan Monaghan, U.S.A.; Byron Peters, Canada; and Daniel McKewen, Australia.
The New Media Gallery is on the third floor at Anvil Centre, 777 Columbia St. For information, see www.newmediagallery.ca.
