Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University College London : B - Fine Art
Uncertain Contract
An actor is dressed as a lawyer, standing in a vast white space. He interprets a script composed of legal terminology in the order it would appear in a real commercial contract. The details of the contract have been omitted, leaving terms such as ‘contract’, ‘parties’, ‘tender’ and ‘service’. The actor delivers the words one by one, starting ‘in character’ as a lawyer, before creating multiple interpretations through gesture, style and characterisation. The piece questions whether the lawyer’s legal identity, and that of the law itself, can be seen as a mere surface to be changed or dissolved at will: an inherently subversive suggestion. The performativity inherent to the courtroom is used as a way to question the assumed objectivity of the law, with the actor’s multiple interpretations instead suggesting an inherent subjectivity. This video artwork is unique in taking the form of a legal contract, and further develops Carey Young’s innovative artistic research into law as a conceptual space.
Solo exhibitions featuring this work include Migros Museum (Zurich 2013), Le Quartier (Quimper, 2013), Paula Cooper Gallery (NYC, 2010), The Power Plant (Toronto, 2009), Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, 2009), Eastside Projects (Birmingham 2010 and tour to Cornerhouse, Manchester and mima, Middlesbrough), Thomas Dane (London, 2008.) Group exhibitions include World as Stage, nbk, Berlin, 2009. Thrice featured in Artforum, it was reviewed in Art Monthly and Frieze (online); discussed in publications Carey Young: Subject to Contract, (monograph) pub. Migros Museum/JRP Ringier (2013), Permanent Mimesis, exh. cat., pub. Electa-Mondadori/GAM, Turin, 2010, and The World as Stage, Neue Berliner Kunstverein / Walter Konig. 2010; discussed in artist talks at venues including Centre Pompidou and the Miami Art Museum and within leading conferences at Tate Modern, Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
