Copperhead Grid
It was in 1990-at the height of a worldwide economic recession that also marked the end of the 1980s art bubble-that Davey began photographing the scratched, worn-away surfaces of pennies, the most devalued and lowest form of currency. Her accumulation of one hundred micro-photographic specimens is constructed around the readymade patterns of decay that countless anonymous owners have unconsciously wrought upon their surfaces; their base materiality is incisively contrasted with the most elevated of national symbols. As with all of Davey's work, there is a melancholic sense of loss that connects subject and form: like pennies, photographs are objects of exchange imprinted by contact with the world around them.
Artwork Details
- Title: Copperhead Grid
- Artist: Moyra Davey (American, born Toronto, 1958)
- Date: 1990
- Medium: Chromogenic prints
- Dimensions: Image: 8 3/4 in. × 6 in. (22.3 × 15.3 cm) each
Sheet: 10 × 8 in. (25.4 × 20.3 cm) each - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2011
- Object Number: 2011.17a–vvvv
- Rights and Reproduction: © Moyra Davey
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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