Use and interpretation of archives – finance: the Baring Archive: Use and interpretation of archives: banking: the currency of art

A research collaboration between CCW (Chelsea, Camberwell and Wimbledon colleges) and the Baring Archive re:SEARCHING enabled artists and researchers across a number of disciplines and institutions to select artefacts in The Baring Archive and to create a new piece of work. New work will be exhibited alongside the historical pieces, a rare opportunity given the issues over conservation and stewardship that usually inhibit such an arrangement.

Although it is current practice for artists to produce work in response to collections and archives, re:SEARCHING is unusual in that the artists are reacting to a financial archive which is more often used by historians. Practitioners have responded to a range of items, including a sketch by Sir Thomas Lawrence of Sir Francis Baring, the firm’s founder; the prospectus for the financing of the Louisiana Purchase; Russian bearer bonds (which ceased to pay interest following the Revolution); and material relating to the Buenos Aires Water Supply & Drainage Company.

re:SEARCHING involves research staff from across CCW, and also from the University of Sussex and the University of Central Lancashire. Their disciplines embrace art history, book art, graphic design, painting and sculpture, a particularly wide range for a project of this nature.

The Currency of Art is one outcome of a collaboration initiated with the ING Bank seven years ago. The most recent stage focuses on The Baring Archive and includes the exhibition at the ING Bank, a Graduate School publication (May 2011), the way the artists had responded to the archive and the revelation of the narratives behind their chosen material raised a further set of questions centering on the fluctuating notion of ‘value’ relating to banking and to the arts themselves. There was a strong feeling that a project examining the interrelationship between art and banking, from both an historical perspective and in relation to the current climate of economic uncertainty, was pertinent and timely and this has resulted in a debate (May 2011) at the ING Bank and a funded bursary to start in September 2012.

The Baring Archive:
As part of Hogan’s work in the Research Department at Wimbledon College of Art, now part of CCW at the University of the Arts London,she has initiated a series of projects which investigate the relationship between artists, archives and scholarship, the impact this relationship can have on artists’ practice and the way that audiences perceive and relate to archives. The projects include a six-year collaboration with the ING Bank and the Baring Archive; establishing the Jocelyn Herbert Archive at Wimbledon (a major theatre design collection), and contributing to the establishment of a Centre for Art and Travel at the National Maritime Museum.

Since 2004 Eileen Hogan has been working on research projects with the ING Bank, which explore ways in which the Baring Archive and Collection can be interpreted and used by art and design communities. In 1818 the first minister of France described Barings as the sixth great power, after Britain, France, Austria, Prussia and Russia, and the collection represents one of the finest financial archives in the world. Its documentation dates back to 1760 when the bank was started by Francis Baring and reaches 1995, when Barings became insolvent due to unauthorized trading and its business was acquired by ING. There have to date been 3 collaborative research projects between WCA – and now UAL - and the Baring Archive. The most recent, re:SEARCHING: playing in the archive, is a CCW-led initiative enabling artists and researchers across a number of disciplines and institutions to select artifacts in the Baring Archive and create a new piece of related work. The research explores the relationship between art and money, the implications of financial systems and the role of banking itself, and interrogates ways in which the special character of the Baring Archive can provide a test case for exploring the research potential of arts-business partnerships. Research questions investigate how the arts and business communities might engage productively in partnership to interpret and re-frame a little-known archive and reveal its value to a varied research community and the wider public.