Showing Size began as a series of paintings. Artist Gordon Halloran was commissioned by financial trader John Woods to create paintings to commemorate the closing of the old building of the Vancouver Stock Exchange in 1981. This began Halloran's in-depth study of individuals in the hectic, competitive, hand-to-hand world of open-outcry trading and led him to produce over thirty works in seven major financial markets in North America and England. Inspired through the creation of these works, Halloran wrote and produced Showing Size.

This one-man show is a portrait of a powerful, charismatic financial market trader named Mike Sizemore, working in the Chicago Board of Trade, the world’s largest open-outcry financial exchange. As the new millennium approaches, his power and influence are threatened by the onset of internet trading. Showing Size has been called into the pit at 5 in the morning to explain himself to the board of directors and defend himself against serious accusations. Fighting for his existence in a burgeoning digitized age, he launches an act of sabotage against the new world order, in a battle for control.

Showing Size depicts a world of power, testosterone, humour, and fiercely adversarial face-to-face trading that is driven by personality and dominance, and speaks to a time when human interaction is being replaced by digitization and computer screens.