Gender and Feminism Research Network: screening and Q&A on video artwork Palais de Justice

We are pleased to welcome artist Carey Young (UCL Slade School of Fine Art) for a screening of her video artwork Palais de Justice (2017), and a q&a discussion with Dr Larne Abse Gogarty, UCL Slade School of Fine Art:

Palais de Justice was filmed surreptitiously at the Palais de Justice in Brussels, an enormous and ornate 19th century courthouse designed to depict law in terms of the sublime. Contradicting the familiar patriarchal culture of law, Young's camera depicts female judges and lawyers at court. Sitting at trial, directing proceedings or delivering judgments, female judges are seen through a series of circular windows in courtroom doors. Always shooting without permission, Young subtly builds a counter-narrative: a legal system seemingly centered on, and perhaps controlled by women, as if male presence may be optional or unnecessary in this particular future.

'Palais de Justice' was recently exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art, Paula Cooper Gallery (New York), Towner Art Gallery (Eastbourne) and La Loge (Brussels), and reviewed in the London Review of Books, the New York Times and Artforum, amongst others. The New York Times termed it ‘a distinctly feminist view of jurisprudence..sensitive and bleak’. Young's artistic work examines and critiques the patriarchal power structures present within corporate culture and law, addressing their language, rituals, visuality and modes of thinking, using a variety of media including video, photography, performance and installation. Young’s work has been exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, Secession (Vienna), the New Museum (New York), MoMA PS1 (New York), amongst many others and is held in museum collections including Tate and Centre Pompidou.

All welcome but please register to attend.

This event is organised by the UCL Gender and Feminism Research Network, part of the Institute of Advanced Studies.

Image credit: Palais de Justice, Carey Young, 2017