Homo Economicus

sculpture and video installation with performance

2009

The sculptural performance piece Homo Economicus is large assembly of objects, video animations and series of slides which act as didactic tools in an instructional lecture on economic theory by the artist. The relationship between economic man and his three main occupations -labour, product and profit – is explained via absurd and forlorn characters: tragic-comic puppets in an unruly economic drama.

The sculptural objects dissect the economic activities of several local East London businesses and are fashioned from the mundane material residues of observed labour: old plastic bottles, hair clippings and rotting fruit. These strange and unfamiliar ‘trophies’ of everyday activity are relocated and displayed in the same businesses from which they arise, thereby setting up direct confrontations between artifice and social reality.