Index > Money > Schmutzgeld
	Installation view: Schmutzgeld
	13 January - 6 February 2005 Elastic Residence 22 Parfett St, Whitechapel, London
	The exhibition ‘Schmutzgeld’ presents six small works developed around the theme of ‘dirty money’ or, as it is phrased in colloquial english; ‘filthy lucre’. The theme supposes that the popular attribution of filthiness to money is not just a reference to the means by which it is procured, but rather expresses an ambivalence or horror at a dark space that separates its nominal and its material value. Printed money can be contrasted to gold which, with a specific grav- ity almost twenty times that of water, is a material better suited to remaining motionless in vaults or safes. The weightless frippery of paper money encourages instead a continual and promiscuous kind of passage through public hands. For over a century the health of the economy has depended on the constancy of the movement of printed paper money. If circulation slows or, under the hysterical logic of hyper-inflation, moves too quickly, then the body sickens. When people mean to speak cynically of money’s corrupting power and say that all money is ‘blood money’ they are acknowledging a simple mechanical truth about its essential role in the public body. Money is filthy because it is exchanged without the possibility of ever being properly ‘cleaned’. The same material used to pay the prostitute or bribe the policeman turns up in the charity box, or is used to purchase pleasure for the philanthropist. Before being exchanged on the street or in a shop, notes or bills are secured inside the trousers; either close to the groin or the fat of one’s arse, or else kept in leather against one’s heart. The honest hand that extends to accept the piece of printed paper also agrees to pass it on and does so with a measure of good faith in the note’s face value. The face of the note itself holds an aesthetic importance - prettied up and underwritten by ornamentation and design - it is commissioned to be accepted by the next hand regardless of how dirty and bruised this commission eventually causes it to appear.
	Contact: Darren Knight Gallery