Back to All Events

Kellie Leczinska: The Madness of Crowds


History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes.
— Mark Twain

POPsmall_1200px.jpg

Panics, mania, crashes and collapses are as common to financial history as thunderstorms to placid summer afternoons. They tend to show up suddenly, wreak more than their fair share of havoc, and recede into the history books only after endless discussion of their causes and cures. Whether brought on by popular delusion, unscrupulous market operators, misguided governments and/or central banks or some random, unforeseen shock, these events are part of the human experience and just as permanent a fixture in our collective history as wars and natural disasters.

Leczinska's photographic series of text and imagery depicts periodic outbreaks of mass irrational and delusional behaviour; the phenomena of mass belief and gullibility spanning 400 years from Tulip Mania to Bitcoin. It is as relevant today as it was in 1637, with echoes from the recent American debt crisis. Why do we seem to forget our collective memory of catastrophes past, still laying bare to our animal spirits of ‘fear and greed’?

Exhibition Opening
Thursday 15 February 6 — 8 pm

Friday 16 February 2018, 10 am — 7 pm
Saturday 17 February 2018, 10 am - 3pm Closing 

Earlier Event: 10 February
FEB 10 Discussion Panel
Later Event: 22 February
Ross Watson: Homines Uniformis