2016-03-10 Thu

Money Talks is the name of a Colombian artist Santiago Montoya’s latest work using banknote iconography. He loves creating artwork using paper money as he believes that paper money carries more beauty than the way people use them casually like the ‘wad of cash’.

Money Talks depicts shape of a different currency – the Dollar, Euro, Yuan, Pound and Rupee which look like very intimidating pictures from a distance. The Money Talks collection is at the Halcyon Gallery, in London’s chic and moneyed New Bond Street. The illusionary effect fades away and one discovers that the images are made up of endless rows of banknote cuttings that form collages, as he/she gets closer.

Other pictures of this collection comprise of the United Kingdom’s reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II; a £50 British note with Her Majesty’s face surrounded by Vietnamese notes with snarling tigers and playfully entitled ‘Hello Kitty’; ‘Elephant and Castle’, where Her Majesty’s face comes after Burmese banknotes with green elephants, and is a wordplay on the south London district of Elephant and Castle where Charlie Chaplin was born.

Other artworks by Santiago include depictions of patriotic heroes on horseback, religious temples, farmers, spinners, industrial ports, mythological animals – are as varied as the countries which issued them.

“Money is the meeting point of all humans on this planet. For good or bad, we are inter-related to one another through it. And it gives us pleasure as much as it makes us miserable,” explains Montoya.

Santiago Montoya, who graduated in Fine Arts in Bogotá, has exhibited his work internationally, with special affection for London as a centre of arts, where he had his first solo exhibition in 2012.