Keemon Williams · sunk-cost fallacy

03.06.2023 - 10.06.2023

11am Saturday, 3rd of June: Artist Talk

noun: sunk-cost fallacy
the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial.

sunk-cost fallacy tackles the pervading values still present in our Australian ethos as a result of generations of colonial grooming and historical bias. The exhibition expresses our traditional nationalism as one of cliques and criminal apologists, denying advancement for all by clinging onto the beliefs that keep our country complicit in a hegemonic Commonwealth circle-jerk. Highlighting cultural stasis and a stubborn lack of accountability, sunk-cost fallacy offers a contained view of the demons that still haunt us, and how in many ways we've already begun to jump ship.

The exhibition utilizes the aesthetics of the pub and curated environments (tanks, displays, exhibits etc.) to contain and subvert the imagery of colonial machismo. A scale model of the HMS Endeavour rendered as a ghost ship sits at the bottom of a fishtank filled with a barren black sand landscape, placed on a bar countertop. This aquascape is inhabited by a horde of shrimp, perhaps signalling a monstrous revenge, eats at the wreckage of Captain James Cook's beloved vessel.

Keemon Williams is a queer Meanjin (Brisbane) based artist of Koa, Kuku Yalanji and Meriam Mir descent. He utilizes an array of mediums old and new to expand his relationships with location, personal histories and cultural plasticity to forge a sense of belonging within all parts of the self. Through Installation, photography, ceramics, new media and virtual technologies, he seeks to challenge notions of Queerness, Indigeneity and Australian identity.

Download the room sheet here.

Review of 'sunk-cost fallacy' by Gabrielle Bergman for Lemonade, 7 June 2023.
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