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Indepth Arts News:
"The Metal Mirror
Coin Photography by Stephen Sack"
1999-10-05 until 1999-12-05
British Museum
London, ,
UK United Kingdom
The Metal Mirror
Coin Photography by Stephen Sack
Supported by the American Friends of the British
Museum,
the British Museum Society and the Royal
Numismatic Society
5 October-5 December 1999
Room 69a
Admission free
Stephen Sack was born in New Jersey (USA) in
1955 and for the last twenty years has lived and
worked in Brussels. His work has been widely
exhibited in Europe and America and is included
in many public and private collections, including
the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Musée
Carnavalet, Paris, the Whitney Museum of Art
and the Chase Manhattan Bank Art Collection,
New York, the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst,
Antwerp and the Collection Banque Bruxelles
Lambert, Brussels. Since 1983, Sack has worked
on several distinct series of photographic images,
collectively called the Chromosomic Memory.
Often using macro photography and sophisticated
lighting techniques he has investigated tombstone
inscriptions, gargoyles, coins, the reverse sides of
engravings, medieval clocks and stereographs (a
form of 19th century photograph), delivering a body
of work that explores ideas of dream, fantasy and
myth. All the objects he photographs are transformed
through the processes of time and deterioration to
create images rich in suggestion, where the final
image, 'is an outcome of the process of symbolic
understanding, remembering and recognition.'
In this exhibition the artist returns to the subject
of coins, a theme that has fascinated him for many
years, to produce a series of challenging new
works largely derived from the numismatic
collections of the British Museum and the
Cabinet des Médailles in Brussels. The
photographs themselves are the result of an
eighteen month collaboration between the
Department of Coins and Medals and the artist.
Sack has worked closely with the curatorial staff,
in the department exploring cabinets full of coins,
many of which may be of relatively little interest
to the expert numismatist because of their poor
condition, but which under the lens of the artist's
camera are transformed to reveal, images of
phantom- like figures, mythical beasts and
shadowy architecture - all suggestive of a lost and
ancient world. This is an impressive new
approach to the subject of numismatics and
brings a new level of understanding to these
familiar, everyday objects.
A 24 plate full-colour catalogue accompanies the
exhibition as well as a series of educational events
involving the artist. For further information on
these events please contact 020-7323 8852/8510
or e-mail educ@british-museum.ac.uk
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