Within the Nineteen Eighties, the American artist J S G Boggs (1955-2017), who was then dwelling in London, started drawing his personal banknotes and making an attempt to pay with them. If that sounds extra like forgery than artistry, it’s value mentioning that his drawings, whereas skilful, have been clearly not the actual factor, and nor did he attempt to cross them off as such. As a substitute, Boggs’s mission to blur the boundary between artwork, cash and performance meant that, if his hand-drawn banknote was accepted, he would later try to trace it down, purchase it again, and show it alongside his change and receipt. On this entertaining account of Boggs’s audacious artwork experiment, Tom Hockenhull, curator of medals and fashionable cash on the British Museum, particulars how the work ran afoul of the Financial institution of England, Scotland Yard and even the British Museum itself, earlier than Boggs eternally altered the look of English banknotes.
