Defaced! Lessons in Alchemy - Artist Talk

Insightful online talk from the Fitzwilliam Museum by contemporary artist, Hilary Powell, whose work features in their current exhibition on defaced currency.

Powell outlined a number of her projects working with communities on social issues. It sounds dry but she has done some amazing work starting with a simple idea and letting it build as she works with different groups of people.

A good example was from when she was an unofficial artist in residence on a demolition site in East London. From the experience she created a pop-up book of a history for the area. Using a collective of people from the area she created 50 books in three days. This then led her to the idea of creating printing ink pigments from old building materials such as bricks and zinc from roofs.

The work highlighted in the show was part of a project called “Bank Job” based in Walthamstow where she got access to an old bank and printed money there with a team of paid trainees which featured images of local people who were working with debt. The money printed there was then sold and the money raised was given to local charities and used to buy up debt from the secondary debt market. This culminated in packing a transit van with papers symbolising the event and blew it up on a site overlooking Canary Wharf. She had issued bonds in exchange for a piece of the van. The currency she printed is now in art galleries.

Her next project is a community power station starting with putting solar panels on every house on a street. I can’t wait to see more of her radical but simple and practical ideas.

Artists website

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