EM Copperhead No. 7, 29, 40, 50, 58, 59, 68, 101

Location: 250 Vesey Street, New York, NY 10281

This artwork is not open to the public

About the work

Moyra Davey’s Copperhead series, conceived following the stock market crash of 1987, consists of one hundred photographs of pennies. Each coin is seen in extreme close-up, so that Abraham Lincoln’s familiar visage is reduced to a strange, foreign terrain. Because the surfaces of the pennies have been worn down by touch, their appearances vary widely. The series emphasizes the individuality of the pennies as objects, as opposed to the standard value assigned them as objects of exchange: they come to seem like many sculptures molded by thousands, if not millions, of anonymous hands. Works from this series are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Tate Modern, London, UK; among other institutions.

EM Copperhead No. 7, 29, 40, 50, 58, 59, 68, 101, 2017/2022

C-print

Each: 30 3/16 x 24 7/16 inches (76.67 x 62 cm) framed

Edition 1/3 + IAP

About Moyra Davey

Artist Moyra Davey (b. 1958, Toronto, Canada) began taking photographs in the 1980s, depicting friends and family and the detritus of daily life, such as whiskey bottles and stacks of vinyl records. She has had solo exhibitions at The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2020); the Art Institute of Chicago (2014); the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2014); Tate Liverpool, UK (2013); Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2010); and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge (2008).