Art Exhibition Draws on World of High Finance for Inspiration

The world of high finance and business have been the inspiration for an exhibition by local artist Belinda Loftus, a wide ranging and thought provoking collection that is on display in the main gallery in Down Arts Centre from Friday 2 November until Saturday 24 November.

The work explores the relationship between the natural and business worlds and represents work made over the past 15 years, including paintings, prints, photos, drawings using a wide range of media, and commercially printed posters, leaflets and bank notes produced for Loftus’ World Bank project.

Many of the drawings challenge the practices of high finance and big business by working over such images as advertisements and stock market reports contained in newspaper pages, and computer print-outs charting the worldwide stock market flash crashes caused by the practice of high-speed, algorithm-based financial trading.

The works are more than intellectual exercises: they are full of lively images of the natural world in all its diversity. The images range from the stark landscapes of polar regions and a songbird lamenting its loss of habitat, to the drama of Icarus falling after flying to close to the sun and constellations representing the wider universe.

In the project for the World Bank, Loftus imagines herself as a bank executive; using the concept of the natural world as the real bank, she used this concept to engage with the public in unlikely venues.

The exhibition will also feature Loftus’ newest production of a Book of Hours, a year-long compilation of drawings and texts exploring the world and people’s place in it.  The publication will be on sale at Down Arts Centre, during the exhibition of her work.

You can find out more about Belinda Loftus’s work at www.bloftus.co.uk

To enquire about activities and events taking place this season at Down Arts Centre, contact the Box Office on 028 4461 0747.