Exhibition

The Financial Crisis Show: Art as a Derivative by Larry McGinity

6 Jan 2014 – 1 Feb 2014

Event times

Mon-Fri 10.30-6, Saturdays 11-5

Cost of entry

Free

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London, United Kingdom

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Travel Information

  • Tube: Baker Street, Bond Street, Marble Arch
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The Financial Crisis Show: Art as a Derivative

About

Hay Hill Gallery's 2014 exhibition schedule is set to open with Larry McGinity's hotly anticipated project ‘The Financial Crisis Show: Art as a Derivative'. On show from the 6th January-1st February, the work weaves together a dramatic historical discourse with beautifully structured bands of colour. McGinity's show is a theatrical demonstration of complex financial networks; his bright comet tails shoot past leaving us trails of information. McGinity believes that art has a responsibility to tell a story and so he uses text as though it were another colour on the palette. The well-documented financial crisis unfolds visually through the 14 paintings of this collection. Voiced with a myriad of intersecting quotes taken from an extensive range of media, each work considers one particular aspect of the whole sorry tale. The viewer is invited to literally read between the lines where euphemisms are out of context and undermined by their own contradictions. The propaganda, manipulations and generalisations are exposed as society's Babel-esque coping mechanism. Offering a very human take on the situation, the darkly humorous pieces read like tragi-comedy. Attempts to interpret the past events have led to an abstracted understanding that the artist highlights within intricate colour rhythms. Nothing is black and white in these Chinese whispers. The text is laid under and over, measured out in grids that weave together a tapestry of voices interrupting each other. Reds, pinks and blues are pixelated like newsprint from the brand new headlines of the morning commute, to the free papers blackening the pavement after rush hour. McGinity learned the alien language of the business world by immersing himself within it, editing his extensive research down from half a million words to the bare bones of 20,000. These tides of information are spread out over primed boards, every letter having been painstakingly transferred by the artist in a delicate operation. A morse code of dots and dashes remind us structurally of places we know; Wall Street is a wide white strip, the Gherkin is made up of curving diagonals. Busily intersecting lines are reminiscent of the London tube map, telephone wires, water pipes and electricity cables- the internal workings of a city. With the benefit of hindsight, McGinity's show gives new perspective to the developing financial turmoil, super-gluing together the hyped up house of cards. His works are cautionary tales that reveal how we got here and why these lessons still need learning.

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