ARTISTS TALKING

The Mackintosh Library, Glasgow School of Art 16 January – 10 February

Received wisdom has it that time is money, but the work of Ral Veroni inverts that proposition. In the hands of this Argentinean painter and printmaker we discover that money may, in fact, be time. The surroundings of Glasgow School of Art's Mackintosh Library, now open only two hours a day because of its historical and architectural importance, provide a somewhat ironic context for a retrospective of Veroni's bookworks. While the library building speaks of stability and permanence, the artist's central work Lucha por la Vida (Struggle for Life) is about instability and the changing meaning of paper money in the circumstances of hyper-inflation.

In 1994 Veroni began to print on old banknotes. At a time of severe financial difficulty disused currency was a wonderfully cheap and accessible source of paper, but it was also a rich metaphorical seam. Veroni's notes are covered in crude silk-screened images and text. Their imagery refers to a whole range of popular sources, cartoons, Day of the Dead imagery from Mexico, agit-prop posters, popular cartoons and printmaking from Hans Holbein's Danse Macabre to Franz Masereel's The City. Skeleton's stalk across the surface of a note; a hand reaches from a coffin to pluck one last dollar to take to the grave; the words 'night and fog' refer to Argentina's disappeared.

Money itself, Veroni implies, is mere paper, but it carries with it the time; the labour of those who strive to obtain it. In the political circumstances of his home nation the pursuit of money has meant profit for some, exhaustion for others. Week-to-week, day-to-day, valuable notes have become meaningless and the conventional strategies of the poor – hard work and saving – have become impossible. Veroni's banknotes, now enshrined in books, have transformed what seemed worthless into a new currency altogether.

Moira Jeffrey

MOIRA JEFFREY is a freelance writer and researcher.