Blood Money Currency Exchange Terminal

• Published in: NEW: Emerging scholars in Australian Indigenous Studies
• Main Author: Anwar, Tooba
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Technology Sydney 2020
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/student-journals/index.php/NESAIS/article/view/1567; https://doi.org/10.5130/nesais.v5i1.1567

Blood Money Currency Exchange Terminal by artist, Ryan Presley, is an exhibition that displays Australian dollars notes appropriated and revamped to have Aboriginal warriors as the faces of currency. The large prints have taken about 2-3 months each to complete and are made with mixed classical mediums (watercolour and oil paint). This exhibition raised important queries, it raised the obvious point that why First Nations People’s heroes are not on Australian currency, instead of those colonisers. First Nations People are rarely commemorated on money. The stories of poets, land rights pioneers and freedom fighters should be textbook history but unfortunately aren’t something that we lean in our school curriculum. These pieces are important in the way that they subvert mainstream history and reach out beyond dead history to a living history.