THE SHREDDED MONEY PROJECT: A project by Imogen Welch
The Shredded Money Project will document ideas on what could be done with the large amount of decommissioned money that I own! (I have over nineteen kilos of shredded notes.) I plan to document all the ideas received, but also to develop some of them into individual pieces of work.
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Imogen Welch |
Imogen Welch |
These banknotes have been shredded by the Bank of England at the end of their useful life. The notes are mainly £10 and I have calculated that this means I have £208 640 in cash! That amount of money would buy a studio flat in Sloane Square, London or a five-bedroom house in Mount Pleasant, Swansea.
I expect the ideas will include projects that could actually happen, like my money collages of reconstructed queens, but also ‘visions’ that can be documented.
I can anticipate work where a pile of money would be shown along side a picture of the luxury item that it would pay for if it were useable. Or, for instance, the pile of money that would buy a vintage sports car compared to the pile that would represent the value of my scruffy nine-year-old Focus.
Later:
I had suggestions for what to do with my £200,000 worth of shredded money from Tineke Bruijnzeels, Alison Carter Tai, Cally Trench, Theodore Hill, Marco Cali, Lis Mann, Philip Lee, Joan Skelton Smith, Ann Rapstoff, and Patrick Jeffs.
These suggestions were augmented by some from me and a couple from other artists. So in the first phase of the project there were thirty ideas in total. With my solo show in Poole beckoning, I decided to document the ideas as artworks, but also make a few small sculptures and maquettes.
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Imogen Welch |
Imogen Welch |
I took the suggestion to ‘make paper from the money' and spent weeks refining my paper making skills with help from Jim Patterson of Two Rivers Paper, who operates partly from Frogmore mill where I have my studio. The resulting sheets incorporate a sprinkling of shredded money, and then are printed with some of the ideas.
The series of text pieces consists of the question and twelve of the suggestions, and they were all printed in editions of three.
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Imogen Welch |
Imogen Welch |
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Imogen Welch |
Imogen Welch |
All 30 ideas from the project's first stage
Put all of the two hundred thousand pounds worth of shredded money in a vitrine and sell it for half a million pounds.
Glue the pieces of shredded money, one by one, on top of each other - so you get fragile ‘towers’ of money.
Use the two hundred thousand pounds worth of shredded money as rabbit bedding.
Stick all the two hundred thousand pounds worth of shredded money back together and buy a studio apartment in Sloane Square.
Make papier-mâché piggy banks out of the shredded money.
Weave the shredded money into a giant mat or a tapestry with tabs for hanging on a wall.
Eat the shredded money and ‘can’ the shit produced.
Fill a pillow with the shredded money.
Display equal amounts of different shredded banknotes labelled with the value for each.
Burn the shredded money in a Chinese ceremony for the ancestors.
Make a map or globe of the world out of the shredded money.
Make packets of confetti out of the shredded money - to throw at weddings or protest marches.
Make a ‘limited edition artwork’ with £10 worth of shredded money in it and sell it for £10.
Hang up a large transparent funnel full of shredded money, which would cause the shredded money to fall gradually onto the floor creating a conical pile.
Use the shredded money for confetti at weddings.
Coat a pair of Wellington boots in the shredded money and then go out walking in them.
Make a sculpture with the shredded money of parents 'made of money'.
Stick the two hundred thousand pounds worth of shredded money back together and buy a 5-bedroom house in Mount Pleasant, Swansea.
Allow visitors to the gallery to walk away with some of the shredded money.
Encase pieces of the shredded money in some way. Attractive, but untouchable, unreachable.
Photograph a pile of the shredded money that would buy a vintage car, if stuck back together, and the pile that would buy a tatty old ford.
Use the shredded money to make a terrible twisted almost un walkable installation of a road (maybe like a tree root, as money is the route of all evil).
Make a map with piles of the shredded money on the countries where most of the world’s money is concentrated.
Hire foreign workers, who will be paid a UK minimum salary, to put the shredded money back together.
Buy a hamster and give it a good and comfortable nest of shredded money. Keep adding to it as a life long position anti money.
Make sculptures from the shredded money in the form of trees.
Stick the shredded money fragments to a naked body.
Make handmade paper out of the shredded money.
Place all of the shredded money in a large tray and let gallery visitors walk through it.
Use the shredded money as petticoat filling to make a quilted, duvet like garment.
Back to Imogen Welch
Back to Tineke Bruijnzeels
Back to Alison Carter Tai
Back to Cally Trench
Back to Theodore Hill
Back to Marco Cali
Back to Lis Mann
Back to Philip Lee
Back to Joan Skelton Smith
Back to Ann Rapstoff
Back to Patrick Jeffs