The Fruitmarket Gallery presented David Faithfull's BAROX and PIECES OF SILVER prints at the Galsow Art Fair in March 2001.

The experimental screen-print series PIECES OF SILVER incorporates shredded Banknotes from the Bank of Scotland vaults, printed at Edinburgh Printmakers on Union Street in Edinburgh

These prints instifgated a later commission from the BAnk of Scotland and Lloyds Bank to create the BULL and BEAR series in 2007.

Banknotes

I have been incorporating ‘raw’ materials, often site-specific, into my prints for over two decades. These have included incorporating crushed and powdered Anorthosite or Moon rock into installations and exhibitions, collaborating with Astronomers and Edinburgh Printmakers (EP) in 2015. More recently I exhibited crushed Oak gall works and guerrilla screen-printed Squid ink on the beaches of Santander. However, the beginnings of these material investigations, like many Art Projects, were conceived by chance and dictated by fortune.

Whilst teaching at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in 1999, I was alone in a colleague’s office when the phone rang. On answering it I initiating an unusual body of printmaking work, which is still evolving 20 years later.

On the line was a Dundee council employee who had been shuffled around the college switchboard. Bizarrely he was offering half a ton of Bank of Scotland shredded money. This was destined for composting in municipal flowerbeds due to its 100% linen and soya-based ink constituents. I unhesitatingly accepted the consignment and awaited delivery.

On the skip’s arrival, the students like archaeologists, sifted through the different denominational layers of coloured shreds. They duly formed, moulded, glued, collaged and even bathed in this mesmerising mercurial material. I meanwhile stuffed a few bin-liners with the shredded money for future use, fascinated with its material and conceptual potential.

Initially experimenting at EP, I was interested in reconstituting the finely shredded material back into visual coinage and banknote forms, representing historical, fiscal references. These involved screen-printing various combinations of medium, ink and varnish, before dusting the fresh ‘wet’ print with the dry shredded banknote particles. These were then run through etching and litho presses, hammering and flattening the shredded flakes onto the base paper, sticking to the wet printed areas and, depending on the press pressure, indenting and debossing the surrounding printed surface. After drying, the loose cash fragments were dusted off, revealing the textured ‘flocked’ forms of coins and banknotes, and supplementary surrounding embossed marks of the final print. I particularly liked the idea that the banknotes, originally engraved with their own delicate squirls, numerals and figures, had returned to a printing press to be reincarnated in a new fiscal form, albeit this time as an abstract print.

This series was first exhibited at Edinburgh Fruitmarket Gallery’s ‘Sum of Parts’ exhibition in 2000, using a tertiary palette of metallic bronze, ochre and the screen-printed and embossed kaleidoscope of shredded banknotes. I reinterpreted the Old Testament tale of Joseph’s brothers betraying him to Slave dealers for ‘20 Pieces of Silver’ and the New Testament story of Judas betraying Christ for ‘30 Pieces of Silver’.