35 Baker Street, London W1U 8EN
PRESS RELEASE
Larry McGinity
The Financial Crisis Show: Art as a Derivative
January 6th- February 1st 2014
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
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.
Ends
Larry McGinity is an artist and writer on art history who was born in Tunbridge Wells in
1956. He studied Politics and Modern History at Manchester University prior to becoming
an advertising salesman, which he gave up in 1985 to study Renaissance painting in
Tuscany. From 1992 – 98 he held solo shows in Germany, Switzerland, New York and
London. Today Larry lives and works in Hackney where he has his studio.
In 2010 he began a new series of paintings driven by a growing interest in the way
economists, financial journalists and market players explained the ongoing financial crisis.
He extensively researched financial media in the UK, US and Europe going back to 2007.
From these assembled texts, he has created 14 thematic paintings in which some 1500
words of verbatim text relevant to each subject were employed. Each artwork focuses on a
separate aspect of the financial crisis such as Subprime, HFT, Wall Street, Derivatives and
City of London.
This now completed series is known as The Financial Crisis Show - Art as a Derivative.
2011 - Present Working on The Financial Crisis Show series
2007 - 2010 Art history writing commissions
2007 John Bloxham Gallery, London
1999 & 2004 Belgrave Gallery, London
1997 DFN Gallery, 648 Broadway, New York
1996 Galerie HILT, Basle, Switzerland
1994 Galerie Pichler, Augsburg, Germany
1990 John Bonham Murray Feely Gallery, London
http://www.thefinancialcrisisshow.com
Notes to Editors: Hay Hill Gallery, located on Baker Street, represents a number of
internationally recognised contemporary artists. The Financial Crisis Show will be held
alongside a group show and a sculpture collection which features works by Eleanor
Cardozo, Richard Minns, Palolo Valdes, Andy Cheese, Ian Edwards and Nicola Godden.
For press information and images please contact Sarah Jones,
Hay Hill Gallery, 35 Baker Street, London W1U 8EN
Tel: 020 7486 6006
Opening hours: Monday – Friday 10.30-6, Saturday 11-5
www.hayhillgallery.com info@hayhillgallery.com