Defaced!: Money, Conflict, Protest

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto have collaborated to produce a fully illustrated catalogue that explores the relationship between money, power, resistance, and dissent. The exhibition examines the political and social tensions present in society over the past 200 years, contrasting the use of money by radicals and the Suffragette movement with the money produced by European empires. The currency histories of the two World Wars reveal the subversion of the nature of money and its role as a tool of occupation, imprisonment, resistance, and remembrance. The exhibition culminates with the work of contemporary artists and activists who use money to highlight the challenges of the modern world. The catalogue features over 130 objects, many of which have never been studied in depth or published before, and is enhanced by important loans from museums and private collections.

Format: Hardback
Length: 168 pages
Publication date: 28 October 2022
Publisher: Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd

This fully illustrated catalogue is the first of its kind to examine the relationship between money, power, resistance, and dissent. It accompanies major exhibitions at The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. War, revolution, and protest are defining themes in all periods of world history, shaping national identities and influencing material and visual culture in myriad ways. The ubiquity of money makes it a powerful vehicle for disseminating the messages of the state to the public, but the symbolic and nationalistic iconography of currency could also be subverted or mutilated in powerful acts of defiance, rebellion, and propaganda. Beginning in Britain in the wake of the American and French Revolutions, the exhibition explores the political and social tensions present in society and communicated through the production or defacement of money over the past 200 years. It contrasts the use of money by the radicals of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, such as Thomas Spence, and the Suffragette movement, with the money produced by European empires as they scrambled to dominate the rest of the world. The currency histories of the two World Wars reveal the subversion of the very nature of what money is and highlight the role of money as the tool of occupation, imprisonment, resistance, and remembrance. The coins countermarked during the Troubles in Northern Ireland hint at the polarised nature of political discourse and sectarian violence. The exhibition culminates with the work of contemporary artists and activists who use money to highlight the challenges of the modern world, both locally and globally – as a canvas, as a raw material, or as a powerful means of communication. From a unique coin commemorating the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 to a contemporary artwork that explores the relationship between money and power, the exhibition offers a rich and diverse perspective on the relationship between money, power, resistance, and dissent.

Dimension: 279 x 241 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781913645335