I’ll Be Gone, You’ll Be Gone

2013-4
Bronze (unsealed), Brass screws, wall, drilled holes
180 x 180 x 30 cm total (approx.), edition of 2.

Above: Installation documentation from ‘Spectral Value’, Milani Gallery, Brisbane, 13 – 29 November 2014

Below: Installation documentation from ‘A commodity is a strange thing’, Cellar Door, Sydney, 16 – 30 June 2023. Curated by Stephanie Berlangieri. (Left: Darren Sylvester, ‘Fortune Teller’ (2019), light jet print, 160 x 120cm. Right: David Attwood, ‘Anti Fatigue II’ (2023), anti fatigue mat, crocs classic crush clog, 62 x 73 x 18cm) Photo credit: Jessica Maurer.

I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone is a sculptural work that responds to the story of David X. Li's 'Gaussian Copula Equation' and its role in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. The bronze plaque, displayed as if in the process of removal, references the previously exalted (and now maligned) position that the formula held in financial services firms such as the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers. Closer inspection of the work reveals its handmade flaws, unsealed finish, and significant weight, making it not only unsuitable for hanging, but prone to tarnishing over longterm display. Fittingly then, the title of the work references a figure of speech used by financial services professionals, the popular use of which emerged during the aftermath of the GFC. The idiom expresses the flippant, dismissive, and irresponsible attitudes of certain brokers and traders towards risk management in general. This attitude was exemplified in the inappropriate use of Li's formula as a way to assess an institution's exposure to potentially calamitous financial scenarios. In these formal qualities and conceptual references, the work reflects on such attitudes and the related power structures of the financial services industry that foster short-term thinking, and reward hubris and greed to the detriment of the global economic system to which we are all subject.

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Spectral Values (1-12)

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Kafka on the Shore