Tally Sticks project

Clever exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery of a new work by Santiago Montoya.

The main work was a structure made of regular sticks called tally sticks to give the idea of an identical match and also of accountancy sticks from the middle ages scored and split to record what one party owed.

These were made into a tower block like structure by tying them together with paper currency. The idea (according to the commentary) was to address the sustainably of society and fragility of the financial structure of the world. And actually for once I could have worked this out and it worked well as an idea. The structure must have been stable but it looked as if a small push would send in crashing down. I loved the idea of old money and modern money combined.

It was shown with his collages made of paper currency which I had seen before and “Forgive me father for I have painted”, which again I have seen before and it consists of artists materials set in Perspex. It was nice to see the objects in a different arrangement to last time.

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