Photographed across four years and four continents, The Canary and The Hammer details our reverence for gold and its role in humanity’s ruthless pursuit of progress. Through a mix of image, text and archival material, the project provides insight into the troubled history of gold and the complex ways it intersects with the global economy.
Gold is ubiquitous in modern life; the mineral is concealed at the heart of much of the technology we use and is, most fundamentally, a potent symbol of value, beauty, purity, greed and political power.
The Canary and The Hammer strives to connect these disparate stories—from the mania of the gold rush and the brutal world of modern
mining to the sexual politics of the industry and gold’s dark role at the heart of high-tech industry.
Prompted by the financial crisis of 2008 and its stark reminder of the global west’s determination to accumulate wealth, Barnard sets out
to question gold’s continued status as economic barometer amidst new intangible forms of technological high-finance. By addressing
this topic through photography, Lisa Barnard in turn raises the question of how her chosen medium can respond to such abstract events
and concepts. The result sketches a personal journey in which she ultimately tackles the complexity of material representation in these
fragmented and troubling times.
In the wheel of economics, which transforms raw materials into manufactured goods and then into abstract entities like financial assets, gold continues to play an essential role. The king of metals, which investors always return to, a symbol of wealth but also of purity, beauty and power, gold has accompanied humanity since its origins, as a currency, as jewellery, as a standard of value, or as one of the essential materials in electronic devices.
In The Canary and The Hammer, British artist Lisa Barnard connects these multiple narratives, in which the gold rush and the brutality of mining intersect with the shadowy realms of high finance, through a variety of media that combine text, image and archival materials. The result is a work of visual research that explores photography’s capacity to express abstractions and connect them with something as tangible and earthy as a mineral.
María Ptqk
Curator, Getxophoto 2026
Born in Kent, United Kingdom, in 1967, Lisa Barnard is an artist, researcher and teacher whose photographic practice addresses real events using traditional documentary resources, alongside more contemporary visual and computer forms. Barnard’s work has been exhibited widely in museums and at photo festivals. She has published four monographs, including two with GOST Chateau Despair; Hyenas of the Battlefield, and Machines in the Garden, (winner of the Albert Renger-Patzsch Prize), The Canary and the Hammer (Winner of the Getty Prestige Images Award), published by MACK and You Only Look Once published by Hartmann. Lisa Barnard has been the recipient of a number of awards, most recently the winner of the CRESPO After Nature Prize (2024). She is an Associate Professor and Head of the Master’s Program in Documentary Photography at the University of South Wales.
Getxophoto is an image festival created and managed by Begihandi, that has been taking place in Getxo—Basque Country, Euskadi—since 2007. This festival is part of a cultural ecosystem with the aim of being more participatory, hybrid, committed and sustainable. This thematic Festival is conceived as a platform that addresses contemporary challenges through different proposals, from visual storytellers around the world, in an attempt to create spaces for reflection and establish a collective conversation. Getxophoto is characterized by the radical defense of public space (both physical and online). For this reason, most of its programme is composed of outdoor installations, highlighting, on the one hand, the link between the image and the environment and, on the other, generating a more horizontal and participatory relationship with the public.
This year, after PAUSE, PLAY and REC, the festival reaches a milestone: its 20th edition. The common thread for this anniversary edition could only be… RESET—a button that invites us to reboot the system. Anniversaries are moments to celebrate and rejoice, but also excellent opportunities to look back and take stock, to review our archives and get a glimpse of what we have changed; and equally a time to project forward with renewed energy, just as when soil is ploughed so that seeds can be sown again. The edition therefore welcomes proposals that address experiences of change, reworking, recycling and reinvention; of life cycles and celebrations; of individual or collective stories of resetting—a system reboot in any of its many forms.
María Ptqk is the curator of GETXOPHOTO 2026.
Copyright © Lisa Barnard and Getxophoto, all rights reserved
