Matilda Fraser

A guide to money creation (2016)

25 min 42 secSingle channel / Digital Video / Colour / Sound

"Is the counterfeit a purely fictive object? We can surely see and hold it. The counterfeit is an object that continually achieves and operates under the status of “real”. Be it the transaction of money, language, emotion, or art, exchange systems rely on our belief in the intrinsic value of things, and Fraser’s small glass coin challenges this notion. The forged coin upends structures of value and exchange, the very slipperiness of the device calling other sureties into question. But what role does a counterfeit one-dollar coin perform when it is itself made of two hundred and ten dollars worth of material? If the contemporary art gallery as a site where price and value are distorted, Fraser’s coin threatens to further destabilise the metrics and axioms of both."

Bridget Riggir, from 'New Perspectives' catalogue, Artspace (2016)

Other works by Matilda Fraser

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