The Very Lively Ones | Adele Dubarry

What initially attracted me to this somewhat obscure subject was the simplicity and beauty of the abstract forms. I had no idea the Celtic tribes at the time were mining and producing their own gold, let alone using it as a form of barter and exchange.

This body of work is the result of six weeks of part-time study I undertook in 2016 in the Coins and Medals Department of the British Museum. I was able to spend two hours each morning and afternoon three days a week, in a little room where they would bring me tray after tray of coins to look at and draw. I was able to hold them in my hands and I was able to take in my sketch book and pencil. They also gave me a magnifying glass – the coins are quite small (and heavy) and not much bigger than your little fingernail.

When they brought out the first tray and I held one in my hand – gold number 3325 from the North East of England, it was quite a spooky feeling To think that I was holding something about 2100 years old, made by someone who lived so long ago, and here I was holding the fruit of their labour, and their knowledge at the time.

So what is this body of work about? That has developed over time. At first it was about the beauty of the forms, and then I got distracted by the gold and trying to capture that in paint. Now, I am back to the symbolism of the forms that have been finely chiselled out in the gold and the silver circles, and what they represented to those people long ago. Power, and status and wealth but not as we today might see it. In our rush to accumulate assets that represent enormous wealth, we’ve lost the desire to simply appreciate the beauty of the horse, the strength of the tree, the magic of an ear of wheat that grows and lets us make bread.

We are probably always going to strive for wealth as human beings, but perhaps now is a really good time to have a long hard think about what that really means.

Adele Dubarry

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