Mixed-media work, 2021
I ended up with a collection of counterfeit banknotes, all stamped 'COUNTERFEIT' or 'FORGERY' but which were due to be destroyed, when I was commissioned to make a work with them by a Building Society (a Savings Bank); but after I panicked about the inadequate idea I'd originally had, and the Building Society itself went bust before I felt confident enough about my idea to complete it.
They stayed with me for years until this idea crystallized.
Based on a dream or hazy recollection I had as a child, after being taken to see "The Jungle Book" that the character woke in the morning after receiving a gift of money and putting it under their pillow; to find it was only dried leaves. It's a trope, of course, from many 'Fairy Tales' where the protagonist receives gifts in the supernatural world but finds they can't take them back.
I was also always fascinated by the 'magic' by which some pieces of paper become money.
But then that's strangely related to what an artist does.
In fact I've made and sold for thousands of euros, works made from pieces of paper picked up from the pavement.
I decided to freeze the moment when the banknotes turn to leaves and the leaves to banknotes. Made from real counterfeit banknotes, dried leaves and pigment ink on archival paper. Some are only counterfeit notes and ink, some are only leaves and ink and some have neither real leaves nor real counterfeit notes.
The idea is that you can't tell whether you're in the dream or not.