The After The Gold Rush project was developed over a two year period during this time Stephen Boyd engaged with colleagues from the Staffordshire Hoard Conservation team and curatorial staff from BMAG & MCC (Museum Collections Centre).  Gallery 16 was the first location for the Staffordshire Hoard Gallery; the title acknowledges this literal displacement whilst also referring back to Neil Young’s poignant 1973 post-bonanza album of the same name.

After The Gold Rush reflects upon the museum at a point of expansion, the recipient of a serendipitous swipe from a metal detector. The intense public interest in these beautiful, ambiguous and historically remote examples of Anglo Saxon gold is well recorded. This notable find seemed to punctuate a period otherwise blighted by austerity. Stephen Boyd started the project by making a photographic record of the impressive, ethically conditioned work of the conservation team. He found a counterpoint to the near celebrity status of theses Anglo Saxon artifacts in the rich accumulation of objects amassed at the Museum Collections Centre. The shelves at MCC are packed with decades of industrial, scientific and design innovation. A small collection of artifacts has been borrowed from MCC - the items selected, playfully echo signifier to be found within Albrecht Durer’s 1503 engraving Melancolia 1 - an image that seemed to chime with the ambience to be found at MCC, where the tools of the imagination are now silent.

Boyd has adopted the process of plate lithography to produce five new editions for this exhibition these were printed at Edinburgh Printmakers. Lithography has an affinity, for the artist, with the production values of album artwork from the 1970’s. The format adopted mimics that of a gatefold album cover. The self-illuminated vitrines created for the exhibition allude to the primary and secondary discoveries of Anglo Saxon gold at the same site. These hybrid pinball / museum cases house the original find bags used at the site, the hurried jottings give a sense of the dawning realization of a big score.