The E-junkie team has an innate fetish for the "different yet relevant" on the web. Be it budding artists, established veterans, leaders-in-making or women who are striving to push hard, we WANT to them to see the light of the day.

Our art section has always garnered a positive response that keeps us on our toes to deliver more bein sloshing creativity to our readers. That's how we stumbled on Bank on Art.

What's the most that one does while visiting a bank or ATM? A cash withdrawl and making a head on move, right? Mundane and no fun!

Here's an art project that is striving hard to making this banking experience a little more lively for one and all. A committed artwork display initiative started by artists and curator Kelly McCray, the online database's site has been designed by artist Walter Willems.

Yes that's exactly what they do, serving a dual purpose - collect artworks from those who wish to share and actually display it at public sites especially banks.

Uniquely named Bank on Art, the team has collaborations with ATMs across Canada. Having worked with nearly 200 visual artists till date, they are looking to expand to new locations as well.

Here's what Bank on Art does. The website has an exclusive section for artists to submit their works and profile details. Once done, the team organizes public art exhibition at the banks. The ATM screens act as the canvass to showcase works by budding artists after every money withdrawl transaction. The images are uploaded manually or via syncing the WiFi networks.If the user wishes to know further about the artists and their works, they can navigate to the website for details.

The website as the company mentions is "the online component of the project and contains all the artworks that have been shown on the ATMs. Also, each participating artist has their own profile page, containing a short bio and up to 3 URLs to their personal or gallery websites."

This initiative has an interesting backdrop. It was in the midst of the world financial crisis, precisely in 2009 that the team did their first contemporary Art ATM in Canada. The message they wanted to send out "was to showcase artwork on ATM screens for people to see whether they withdrew money or not".

These ATMs feature artworks after a good introspection on a rotation basis. A maximum of six images appear on the ATM screen until a debit card is inserted. Once the transaction is done, the images reappear until the next customer arrives. On the whole its an encouraging project that is out there to give local artists the much needed exposure. There is no participating fee nor any monetary returns to the artists who approach them. However, the impact of the displays has been such that artists have earned shows, exibition offers and handsomly sold their works to those who have seen it on the ATMs.

Check out this video for insights:


If you are already inspired, are an artist or know any good works that need a platform for display, do visit their website.

You can share with us your thoughts on this commerce of art by leaving a comment below.

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