Edition 29/60

Fiona Hall (b1953)

Colour Photo Lithograph on Paper

Framed with non-reflective glass

This work is included in the 2003 “Common Ground | Republic Unlimited” portfolio and was printed by Martin King, Australian Print Workshop, Melbourne

In this work Fiona Hall commentates the Australian drive towards a republic. It features two ten-pound notes, both in currency in the 1950s – one from the United Kingdom and one from Australia. At the time of their circulation in Australia, shared currency articulated a shared bond with ‘the Mother Country’. In contemporary times, this shared identity has waned. At the time of print, 50 years since the notes’ circulation, Hall expressed in her work that more than simply waning, that these identities were at “cross-purposes.”

The two notes depicted in these works have forgone their original imagery of Queen Elizabeth and Australia’s founding governor and have instead been replaced, by Hall, with alternative symbols of their respective countries – the leaves of English oak (Auercus robur) and the coolabah tree (Eucalyptus microtheca). Hall asserts that these better symbolise our differences, however in their overlapping configuration, the distinct details of these images are lost, and further blurred by the official embellishments of the bank notes. In this way, Hall expresses the muddy and sometimes lost efforts towards an Australian republic.

The subject matter of an Australian republic sits at the heart of the Republic Unlimited print portfolio series, which was originally conceived to annually publish prints by at least two of the best Australian artists of the year, until an Australian republic was achieved.

Fiona Hall

Cross Purpose

Artwork description