BRITISH JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Lisa Barnard’s investigation into the troubled history of gold

Description

Crossing four continents over four years, Lisa Barnard’s latest project explores our ongoing obsession with gold as “a potent symbol of value, beauty, purity, greed and political power”

Shot over four years and across four continents, Lisa Barnard’s The Canary and The Hammer focuses on gold, pulling the veil on a subject that is as hidden as it is familiar, permeating our lives in ways that are as abstract and tangential as the value we place on this most precious of metals. Her approach to this vast topic is exploratory and wide-ranging. Rather than attempt any kind of neat overview, she presents a series of disparate investigations that reveal our historical relationship with gold, its continued importance within the technology we use, and perhaps most importantly, its potency as a “symbol of value, beauty, purity, greed and political power”. Diane Smyth