“FLOATING Currency,’  was, as creative director of Centenary of Canberra Robyn Archer said this morning, a simply brilliant name for a new sculpture, part of the buzz  that permeates Canberra as the national capital, so evident in political events of yesterday, of which she said, “I’m glad it happened during the Centenary of Canberra—the frisson was incredible.”

The work, she said had been ‘Envisioned’ by Chris Mether, of the design company Whitecube, who had grown up in Canberra and also recently completed design work for the National Archives for the “Design 29” exhibition and for the National Museum.

“Increasingly, I enjoy art that I just encounter,” she told those present. Visitors to Canberra would now “accidentally encounter” this new sculpture, the brainchild of a designer who was “at the cusp of exhibition design.”

‘Floating Currency,’  is made up of hundreds of colourful resin ‘coins’ that were until laser technology took over, used as part of the coin production process for  each standard decimal coin design released since 1965. Suspended from the ceiling throughout the foyer and mezzanine areas, the ‘coins’ are intended  to become a magnet for members of the public curious enough to visit.

Delicately coloured and likely to change in hue over the years, the  resin coins were,  according to the CEO of the Royal Australian Mint, Ross MacDiarmid, a perfect example of the amazing technical skills at the Mint, and its chief engraver Stan Tokarski.

Archer, who  revealed herself to be “a closet stamp and coin collector,” said she had been long fascinated by what stamps and coins tell us about a place of its history, adding that anyway, the Australian story could  be told “nowhere better than in Canberra.”

She told those present for the ‘unveiling,’ (it was hard to unveil a sculpture hanging from the ceiling, she said) that  while visitors to Canberra may think about the National Gallery and the Australian War Memorial, they were less likely to think about the  Australian National Botanic Gardens and the Royal Australian Mint, both of which could make equal claim to revealing Australia’s culture.

MacDiarmid agreed, noting that his intention as CEO was to make the Mint more “interactive” and said that improvements for Mint visitors had already started with a new foyer display of beautiful old minting machinery,  new way-finding signage,  a revamped café and of course today’s ‘unveiling’. They had only 120,000  visitors annually now, he said, but were aiming for 280,000 by  2015

Public friendly activities of late have included the of the Slim Dusty coin and the exhibition “Shilling’s Year – a coin’s eye view of the year 1913”, was also on display after having been  developed in association with the National Museum of Australia’s Centenary exhibition “Glorious Days: Australia 1913”.

“This sculpture is just one of the ways we are telling and continuing to tell Australia’s story through coins,” said MacDiarmid.