Ms Carey Young
Associate Professor
Slade School of Fine Art University College London
London WC1E 6BT
Biography
Carey Young’s institutional solo exhibitions include Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark; La Loge, Brussels; Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne; Dallas Museum of Art; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; Eastside Projects, Birmingham; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis; and The Power Plant, Toronto. Group exhibitions include Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Centre Pompidou (Paris and Brussels); the New Museum, New York; MoMA/PS1, New York; Tate Britain and the Busan, Sharjah, Moscow and Venice Biennials, amongst many others. She is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York and her works are held in the collections of Tate, Centre Pompidou, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Arts Council England, Sharjah Art Foundation, Kadist Foundation, Busan Museum of Art and Dallas Museum of Art, amongst others. www.careyyoung.com
Research Summary
Carey Young developed her practice with a cross-fertilization of disciplines including business, law and science. The tools, language and rituals of these different fields have acted as material for her installations, performances, text works and photographs. Since 2002 Young has collaborated with lawyers to create a playful series of works which explore the potential of law as an ‘artistic medium’, and which have addressed artistic themes such as landscape, portraiture or the sublime, as well as legal fields such as land law, intellectual property or outer space law.
More recently, Young created two ambitious, interrelated video works which deepen her interests in women, the gaze and power. With Palais de Justice (2017) the artist spent two years surreptitiously filming female judges and lawyers working at the main courthouse of Belgium. Using a painterly, hallucinatory aesthetic, the piece evokes a legal system centred on or controlled by women, and explores ideas of power, voyeurism and the cinematic.
In The Vision Machine (2020), Young filmed at the factory of SIGMA Corporation, a well-known brand of lenses for photography and cinema production. Using lenses manufactured there, the artist filmed their female workers, carefully framing these highly skilled technicians to suggest a lensmaking factory run (and perhaps owned) only by women. Using the factory and its processes as a metaphor for photography, cinema and mass production in a wider sense, the piece suggests a female-centric vision, or indeed, perhaps a wider visual culture created by women.
Teaching Summary
I joined the Slade in 2011 and teach Fine Art across undergraduate, MA and PhD level. I have a special responsibility for Photography tuition within the Slade. I'm also pleased to support a growing group of undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD students across the Slade who are interested in the intersections of law, institutions, power and aesthetics.
Prior to joining the Slade I was a Senior Lecturer in Photography at London College of Communication (2006 - 2011) and Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of East London (2005 - 2006.)
My recent experience as a visiting lecturer for undergraduate and postgraduate programmes includes:
Royal College of Art, London (MA programmes in Critical Fine Art Practice, Photography, Performance, Sculpture and Curating)
Goldsmith's College, London (Research Architecture dept, Fine Art dept)
Harvard
Zhdk, Zurich
I am current external examiner for MA Photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.
I regularly speak at conferences and public symposia, including events at Tate Modern, Museum of Modern Art (New York), Harvard, Princeton, Uni. of Cambridge, Oxford Uni. and in law faculties such as Birkbeck and the Uni. of Lucerne, and like to bring these interdisciplinary bodies of knowledge into my teaching at the Slade.
I've been an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Law at Birkbeck, Uni. of London, since 2013.
Exhibitions
The Vision Machine
2020Kunsthal Aarhus
Video
Busan Biennial
2020http://www.busanbiennale.org/eng/index.php?pCode=bienn02
Words at an Exhibition–an exhibition in ten chapters and five poems. Busan Biennale 2020 examines the city and tries to expand the various spectrums of a metropolitan through artistic expressions. At Busan Biennale 2020, ten fiction writers and one poet were invited to write on the characteristics of the city of Busan as a conceptual basis for selecting the artists, each responding through new commissions and existing works within the context of the exhibition. The authors—which represent different generations, genres, and writing styles—have each created and written fictional layers around and about the city, some with direct reference to Busan, others through indirect and ephemeral urban tales involving the locale. Mixing past, present, and future, the artists and writers involved in Words at an Exhibition — an exhibition in ten chapters and five poems use Busan as a backdrop in ways that create a narrative that simultaneously combines reality, history, and imagination through experiences of contemporary fiction, a focus on soundscapes and film works, as well as paintings, photographs, sculptures, and site-specific installations.
Palais de Justice
2019La Loge
Video
Solo show of video installation 'Palais de Justice' at La Loge, Brussels
Palais de Justice
2019La Loge, Brussels
Solo exhibition at La Loge, Brussels
Palais de Justice
2019Towner Gallery
Video Art
Solo exhibition at Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, UK
Carey Young: Palais de Justice
2019Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne UK
Solo exhibition, Towner Art Gallery, UK
Front International: Cleveland Triennial
2018Various venues across Cleveland, Ohio
Major international art exhibition of works relating to contemporary geopolitics and to the site of Cleveland, Ohio.
Extra Bodies - The Use of the 'Other Body' in Contemporary Art
2017Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich
Extra Bodies investigates an artistic phenomenon that appeared often in the 1990s, characterised by artists using «other bodies» for their works and making their «vitality» central. These works are all performance-based or of performative nature. The exhibition focuses on works in which the exhibited artists make use of the «other bodies» on the basis of their respective specific social roles, thus making the societal dimension a constituent element of the work – these «other bodies» can also be described as «extras». In multiple exhibition sections, which span both floors of the museum and incorporate many works from the museum's collection, light is shed on this phenomenon, and artworks from the 1960s to the present day are brought together by way of example. Most of all, the transition from the use of a «bio-political» body to a «psycho-political» body, as seen over the last 30 years, is in the foreground.
Ripple Effect
2017Futura Institute of Contemporary Art, Prague
group show including Darren Bader, Egill Sæbjörnsson, Carey Young. The project is structured around three semantic points, where the notion of gratification, speculation and temperament are heightened by the artworks that are placed in close vicinity to ignite a conversation amongst and beyond. Three works by three internationally recognized artists Darren Bader, Egill Sæbjörnsson, and Carey Young are positioned as the precursors of the intrinsic inquiries of the exhibition that open up and expand to include works by artists active on the Czech art scene. The exhibition title suggests a system of relationships, where a single drop may cause effects much larger than the original move. Works by the international artists serve as such thematic drops, initiating dialogues related to the symbolic value of art, its judgment and categorization, the politics of the art world establishment, as well as self-awareness and self-reflection of the artists and their works placed within such structures. Curated by Fatos Utsek.
I am you, you are too
2017Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
At a time of heightened uncertainty, division, and geopolitical tensions, I am you, you are too foregrounds works from the Walker’s collections that explore contemporary life through themes of citizenship and belonging, borders and barriers, and ways in which everyday life informs our understanding of ourselves. Bringing together a diverse, multigenerational, and international group of artists, the exhibition questions how we memorialize the past and understand the social, geographic, and political structures that shape us. The show’s title is taken from I M U U R 2 (2013), a room-scaled installation by Danh Vo that considers how collected objects, such as knickknacks and souvenirs, can communicate who we are. Monuments and shared public space play a key role for Francis Alÿs, Song Dong, and Robert Longo, whose works examine the relationship between the individual and the state. Chantal Akerman and Julie Mehretu reflect upon shifting geographical borders and changing political systems, while Postcommodity and Wolfgang Tillmans reference recent debates on the Mexico-US border and Brexit, respectively. While some artists draw on recognizable places and known stories, others turn to abstraction to elicit themes of the place of the home, the city, and national belonging. In the exhibition’s final gallery, a selection of works from the collection hang against wallpapers by Yto Barrada, Yoko Ono, and Adam Pendleton, forming unexpected juxtapositions across generations, geographies, and media. Seen together, these pieces chart ways that artists have challenged prevailing systems, including gender, race, and sexual orientation. In presenting a broad range of artistic approaches, I am you, you are too draws out timely questions of national identity, shifting political borders, and international and intercultural dialogue. Artists in the Exhibition Vito Acconci, Chantal Akerman, Francis Alÿs, Giovanni Anselmo, Siah Armajani, John Baldessari, Yto Barrada, Harriet Bart, Joseph Beuys, Alighiero Boetti, Mark Bradford, Stanley Brouwn, James Lee Byars, Luis Camnitzer, Sarah Charlesworth, Bruce Conner, Hanne Darboven, Michael Dean, Song Dong, Stan Douglas, Lara Favaretto, Leon Ferrari, Ellen Gallagher, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Dan Graham, Steven Gwon, David Hammons, Leslie Hewitt, Douglas Huebler, Alfredo Jaar, Ronald Jones, On Kawara, Nobuaki Kojima, Tetsumi Kudo, Yayoi Kusama, Ralph Lemon, Sherrie Levine, Sol LeWitt, Glenn Ligon, Robert Longo, Kerry James Marshall, Paul McCarthy, Dave McKenzie, Julie Mehretu, Cildo Meireles, Ana Mendieta, George Morrison, Nástio Mosquito, Bruce Nauman, Shirin Neshat, Rivane Neuenschwander, Lorraine O’Grady, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco, Adam Pendleton, Howardena Pindell, Adrian Piper, Pope.L, Postcommodity, Walid Raad, Charles Ray, Gerhard Richter, Paul Sharits, Gary Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Robert Smithson, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kwong Chi Tseng, Danh Vo, Andy Warhol, Rachel Whiteread, Christopher Williams, Carey Young Curators: Vincenzo de Bellis, Adrienne Edwards, Pavel Pyś
Palais de Justice
2017Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, USA
Paula Cooper Gallery is pleased to announce a one-person exhibition of recent work by Carey Young. The show will present Young’s video work Palais de Justice (2017), as well as a new series of photographs. The exhibition will be on view at Paula Cooper Gallery 534 West 21st Street from September 7th through October 14th, 2017.
Before the Law
2017Paula Cooper Gallery, New York US
Photography
Titled Before the Law, after Franz Kafka’s 1915 parable in which the protagonist is continuously denied access to ‘the law,’ the series depicts a series of doorways in courthouses as metaphors for the legal system itself. Courtrooms are glimpsed in various ways – a red glow emanating from one entices us with its surprising warmth and seductiveness; a red velvet curtain in another calls to mind law’s reliance on aspects of theatre; in a third, a courtroom visible through a frosted glass window glows like an abstract painting, as if law’s abstractions may connect with artistic thinking in ways which have not yet been fully considered. The works were first exhibited at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, from Sept - Oct 2017
Feedback, Marlborough Gallery, New York
2017Marlborough Gallery New York
Group exhibition of contemporary international artists working with the theme of 'feedback'.
Venice Agendas: The Contract
2017DACS, London
The exhibition includes artworks by Keith Arnatt, Hollis Frampton, Hew Locke, Donald Rodney, Monica Ross and Carey Young and is curated by Gilane Tawadros. At a time of significant social and political turbulence in the world, the obligations – explicit or implied – which we have towards each other are being called into question, re-negotiated and re-written. The Contract presents works that challenge the contractual agreements which we take for granted, recalls others which we need to remember, and provokes discussion about the nature of our obligations.
The New Architecture
2017Dallas Museum of Art
Carey Young: The New Architecture was the artist’s first solo museum show in the US since 2009. This exhibition included the world debut of Palais de Justice (2017), a video work by the London-based artist, together with a selection of new and existing photographic and text-based works. Palais de Justice was filmed at the Palais de Justice in Brussels, an enormous, ornate 19th-century courthouse designed to depict law in terms of the sublime. Contradicting the familiar patriarchal culture of law, Young’s camera portrays 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. Palais de Justice 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. The New Architecture sampled a decade of Young’s practice, offering a meditation on power—judicial, corporate—and artistic ideas of performance, space, and the sublime.
End User
2016Ryder Projects, London
The RYDER presents ‘End-User’, an exhibition of works by artists Jason File, JonesSmithJohnson, Jonas Lund and Carey Young exploring contract law and its far-reaching implications within our lives. .
The Revolution will not be Grey, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen
2016Aspen Art Museum
The Revolution Will Not Be Gray presents a selection of works that look both backward and forward at the shifting terrain of revolution, protest, and gestures of refusal. Examining the impetus to observe the world in strictly black-and-white terms, the exhibition reveals an intricate set of histories, politics, and identities, reminding us of the inherent power in the human voice. Featuring work by Andrea Bowers, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Claire Fontaine, Sharon Hayes, Iman Issa, Tony Lewis, Glenn Ligon, Carlos Motta, Pedro Reyes, Adam Pendleton, and Carey Young.
As Rights Go By — On the Erosion and Denial of Rights, curated by Sabine Winkler
2016Q21, MuseumsQuartier Wien
The artworks shown in the exhibition explore the impact of globalization, financialization, and mass surveillance on civil rights and human rights, as well as the social and judicial inequality they entail. Silvia Beck* (DE), James Bridle (GB), George Drivas (GR), Özlem Günyol*/Mustafa Kunt* (TR/DE), Adelita Husni-Bey (IT), Nikita Kadan* (UA), Kollektiv Migrafona (Belinda Kazeem, Petja Dimitrova, Radostina Patulova, Vlatka Frketić, Vina Yun) (AT), Vladimir Miladinović* (RS), Yuri Pattison (IE), Lorenzo Pezzani und Charles Heller (Forensic Architecture) (IT, USA/CH), Julien Prévieux (FR), Andrea Ressi (AT), Judith Siegmund* (DE), Lina Theodorou* (GR), Carey Young (GB)
A Lesson in Sculpture with John Latham
2016Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
'A Lesson in Sculpture with John Latham' addresses his visionary contribution to the study of sculpture, bringing sixteen works by Latham, spanning 1958 to 2005, into conversation with sixteen sculptures by artists working across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Full list of artists in the exhibition: Artists included: Bernard Aubertin (France, 1934-2015) Marcel Broodthaers (Belgium, 1924-76) Tony Cragg (England, b. 1949) Marcel Duchamp (France, 1887-1967) Barry Flanagan (Wales, 1941-2009) Mary Kelly (USA, b. 1941) Yves Klein (France, 1928-62) John Latham (Zambia, 1921-2006) Liliane Lijn (USA, b. 1939) Annea Lockwood (New Zealand, b. 1939) Gordon Matta-Clark (USA, 1943-78) Josiah McElheny (USA, b. 1966) Cornelia Parker (England, b. 1956) Katie Paterson (Scotland, b. 1981) Michelangelo Pistoletto (Italy, b. 1933) Neal White (England, b. 1966) Carey Young (UK/US citizen, b. 1970)
No-one Belongs Here More than You, Despacio, Costa Rica, curated by Sandino Scheidegger
2016Despacio, Costa Rica
Despacio presents conceptual works spanning the past 40 years by artists who understand how to capture and create ingenious moments that inform our memories and provoke our deepest ruminations. Including Bethan Huws, Julian Charriere, Ivan Argote, Carey Young
During the Exhibition the Museum will be Closed
2015Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg
During its temporary closure the Museum für Neue Kunst invites you to an unconventional program in public spaces around the city. Artworks by: Joseph Beuys Ahmet Ögüt Mounira Al Solh Catherine Ryan & Amy Spiers Richard Schindler Mladen Stilinović Carey Young The show included Carey Young's 'Welcome to the Museum' (2009), a telephone-based work, which can be accessed from any phone by calling a specific number. Referring to the telephone answering systems used by most large organisations, Young has created an answering system for a semi-fictional and absurd museum whose labyrinth of departments can be explored by callers.
Liberties: An exhibition of contemporary art reflecting on 40 years since the Sex Discrimination Act
2015Collyer Bristow Gallery, London
Works by over 20 women artists that reflect the changes in art practice within the context of sexual and gender equality since the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) in the UK. Artists included: Guler Ates, Helen Barff, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Jemima Burrill, Helen Chadwick, Sarah Duffy, Rose English, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Alison Gill, Helena Goldwater, Joy Gregory, Margaret Harrison, Alexis Hunter, Frances Kearney, EJ Major, Eleanor Moreton, Hayley Newman, Freddie Robins, Monica Ross, Jo Spence, Jessica Voorsanger, Alice May Williams and Carey Young.
Et Mon Droit
2015Copperfield Gallery, London SE1
Group show of artists working with law, incuding Jill Magid David Birkin Jason File Marco Godoy Etienne Chambaud Carey Young
Stand Up! Nouveau Festival, Centre Pompidou
2015Centre Pompidou
Group show and screenings/events at the Centre Pompidou, Paris relating to the theme of stand-up comedy and art. Carey Young's video work 'Everything You've Heard is Wrong' is included.
Not: The Art of Resistance
2015Holden Gallery, Manchester Metropolitan University
The exhibition explored the work of contemporary artists who have attempted to enact alternative modes of resistance. What these works often share is their attempt to resist cycles of antagonism and assimilation as they produce alternative models for practice and its relation to the market. Artists: Andrea Fraser – Liam Gillick – Jenny Holzer – Jonathan Monk – SUPERFLEX – Carey Young
Listening
2014Baltic, Newcastle and tour
Listening was a Hayward Touring Curatorial Open exhibition, and included new and existing work by leading contemporary artists including Ed Atkins, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Mikhail Karikis, Ragnar Kjartansson, Lina Lapelyte, Christian Marclay, Haroon Mirza, Max Neuhaus, Katie Paterson, Amalia Pica, Laure Prouvost, Hannah Rickards, Prem Sahib, Anri Sala, Imogen Stidworthy and Carey Young.
Per/Form. How to do things with[out] words
2014CA2M, Madrid, Spain
Per/Form. How to do things with[out] words CURATOR: Chantal Pontbriand ARTISTS: With: Mathieu Abonnenc / Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla / Brad Butler & Karen Mirza / Geneviève Cadieux / Jean-Pierre Cometti / Agnès Dahan / Adrian Dan / Angela Detanico & Rafael Lain / Carole Douillard / Cevdet Erek / Köken Ergun / Esther Ferrer / Chiara Fumai / Ryan Gander / Simon Fujiwara / Dora García / Camille Henrot / Sandra Johnston / Amelia Jones / Latifa Laâbissi / La Ribot / Ines Lechleitner / Franck Leibovici / Cristina Lucas / Haroon Mirza / Antonio Negri / Roman Ondák / Falke Pisano / Chantal Pontbriand / Chloé Quenum / Pedro Reyes / José Antonio Sánchez / Julião Sarmento / Ulla von Brandenburg / Carey Young / Héctor Zamora. The project, a laboratory situation including installations, workshops, and performances, explored questions of how art deals with reality in a performative way. How artists use forms to create meanings, or rather multiple and open-ended meanings. Here meaning is not fixed, it fluctuates as relations between things, ideas, people are activated. The project consists of different modes of “display”: the exhibition per se which brings together 16 installation works, some of which include live elements, others which can be activated live in different ways, in situ works which will be activated in the city, and performative situations which will be concentrated in three days throughout the project. PUBLICATION: A book will be published including texts by Jean-Pierre Cometti, Amelia Jones, Antonio Negri, Chantal Pontbriand, and José Antonio Sanchez. The artists will contribute to the book in the form of visual essays. Editor: Chantal Pontbriand. Designer: Agnes Dahan. Publisher: CA2M/Sternberg Press.
And I Laid Traps for Troubadours, curated by Kadist Foundation
2014Clark House Initiative, Bombay
Included artists Francis Alÿs, Yael Bartana, Ceal Floyer, Aurélien Froment, Grupo Etcetera, David Horvitz, Poonam Jain, Ben Kinmont, Lawrence Liang, Scott Myles, Open Circle, Prabhakar Pachpute, Prasad Nikumbh, Roman Ondak, Pratchaya Phinthong, Société Réaliste, Zied Ben Romdhane, Caecilia Tripp and Nil Yalter, Carey Young 'And I laid traps for troubadours' is an exhibition of cultural transference: how ideas travel through objects and how the meaning of artworks will change and accrue, when brought into the context of Bombay's political and social realities, and imaginaries. The exhibition uses the Kadist collection as a starting point to open to other collaborations.
Prospectif Cinema, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
2014Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
The “Prospectif Cinema” cycle highlights the cinematographic production of French and international artists. It is a unique opportunity to follow new events and developments in contemporary art and to analyze the issues it deals with. The event will offer a screening of Carey Young's video work, 'Everything You've Heard is Wrong' (1999), which was acquired by the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2004.
Spaces of Exception, Moscow Biennale
2013Moscow Biennale, Moscow, Russia
The ‘Book of Decrees’ was created by the legendary Russian conceptualist Dmitry Prigov (1940-2007) in 1977. It consisted of 6 pages, each of which enunciated a decree signed by “A. Prigov, chairman". Included were the following: the decree of the animal, decree of the air, decree of closeness, decree of unit, decree of black, and ultimately, the decree of decree. Blending sincere imitation, stylization and parody, in his work Prigov often celebrated and questioned the role of the artist as legislator. This project takes up this myth of the ‘artist as legislator’ from today's point of view, when artists assume multiple identities: producer, researcher, worker, romantic entrepreneur, cognitive proletarian, etc. In this project the artists mobilize their "legal imagination" and invent their own rules of engagement for approaching specific social, political or economic problems. They stage legal texts or cases, create their own laws or legal systems, – i.e., their own rules of the game, and apply the subversions of aesthetics to them through either image or anti-image, the performative and the fictional. The resulting work ranges from self-defined spaces for legal utopias, almost science-fictional in nature, up to moments of documentary truth and poetic justice. Artists: Yuri Albert Ivan Brazkin Chto Delat Yevgeniy Fiks Nikita Kadan/Alexander Burlaka Gulnara Kasmalieva/Muratbek Djumaliev Gert Jan Kocken Irina Korina Jiri Kovanda Maryanto Taus Makhacheva Renzo Martens Metahaven Aernout Mik Marina Naprushkina Nikolay Oleynikov Anna Parkina Dmitry Prigov Tima Radya Willem de Rooij Haim Sokol Jonas Staal Roy Villevoye Carey Young Katarina Zdjelar
“Carey Young: Legal Fictions,” curated by Raphael Gygax, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich
2013Migros Museum, Zurich
A solo exhibition by Carey Young at the Migros Museum, Zurich, Jan - March 2013, with accompanying monograph, 'Carey Young: Subject to Contract, published by JRP | Ringier, Zurich, and Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, 2013.
DLA Piper series: Constellations, Tate Liverpool
2013Tate Liverpool
My work 'Body Techniques (after Parallel Stress, Dennis Oppenheim, 1970), 2007, included in the exhibition. DLA Piper Series: Constellations explores connections between major works from the Tate collection across art history by arranging them in nine 'constellations.' It presents a complete re-hang of the collection displays at Tate Liverpool, and brings together over 100 artworks created between 1900 and the present day, including a significant number of new and recent acquisitions.
Carey Young: Let the World Speak for Itself
2013Le Quartier, Centre d'Art Contemporain de Quimper
Le Quartier presents the first solo exhibition in France of Carey Young, a British artist who, over the last fifteen years, has developed her artistic practice from a crossfertilisation of disciplines including economics, law, politics and communication. The tools of these different fields act as material for her installations, text works and photographs, as well as for videos in which absurd relationships develop between the performer and the rhetoric of political, commercial or legal discourse. The exhibition at Le Quartier is the first to draw together many of Young’s photographic works. Employing a diverse range of media, this work is characterised by a conceptual and experimental approach. The artist explores the relation of the photographic image to broader systems of commodification and distribution in today’s globalised context. With the support of the British Council Carey Young was born in 1970 in Lusaka, Zambia. She lives and works in London, England. After her Masters degree in photography at the Royal College of Art, London, she has had solo shows at galleries such as the Henry Moore Institute (Leeds), John Hansard Gallery (Southampton), The Power Plant (Toronto) and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. She has also recently participated in group exhibitions at Tate Britain, the Hayward Gallery, the New Museum (New York), PS1/MoMA (New York), IAC Villeurbanne, Le Plateau (Paris), and the Sharjah, Moscow, Taipei, Tirana, Rennes and Venice biennials. A solo show by Carey Young will open at the Migros Museum, Zurich, in Autumn 2013, to be accompanied by a monograph published by Migros Museum and JRP Ringier. She is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.
An Exhibition: Stefan Bruggeman, Lawrence Weiner, Carey Young
2013Holden Gallery, Manchester School of Art, Manchester, UK
An Exhibition [an] [ek-suh-bish-uh-n] Noun 1. A space that needs to be filled 2. An interaction between artist, audience, curator and the gallery 3. A conversation about the use of language and communication through the display of art An Exhibition features works by Stefan Brüggemann, Lawrence Weiner, Carey Young and Itinerant Texts a collection of original slide works by twelve international artists. Any gallery always starts from the same point, that of emptiness, a space which needs to be filled. An Exhibition draws attention to that process and makes an explicit connection to the ways in which galleries work. One of the most important elements of any exhibition is that of communication between art work and audience. Each of the artists taking part has produced a body of work which questions the nature of information and the way in which we interact with the gallery space. An Exhibition opens up a conversation about the use of language and communication, as well as the relationship between artist, audience, curator and institution. Included in An Exhibition are two seminal text works by the key conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner. Carey Young has previously collaborated with business consultants and think tanks; her work often centres on notions of communication and language through her explorations of corporate culture. Works in the exhibition make use of humour and irony, some even challenge why they are there. Stefan Brüggemann consistently produces text based works that are often ambiguous, challenging and subversive. An Exhibition also includes Itinerant Texts, a set of original slide works by twelve international artists including Angela Bulloch, Tacita Dean, Tracey Emin, Douglas Gordon , Joseph Kosuth, and Simon Patterson. These artists have created works that comment on travel, transience and the nature of site-specificity.
Stage Presence: Theatricality in Art and Media
2012San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
The exhibition presented works in a variety of media and features a series of performances that explore the influence of theater, dance, and performance in contemporary art. Artists in the Exhibition: Charles Atlas, Gerard Byrne, Janet Cardiff, James Coleman, Geoffrey Farmer, Fischli/Weiss, Andrea Fraser, General Idea, Sharon Hayes, Craigie Horsfield, Mike Kelley, George Legrady, Tucker Nichols, Tony Oursler, Mika Tajima with Charles Atlas, Sam Taylor-Wood, Catherine Wagner, and Carey Young.
The Nature of Disappearance, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York
2012Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, USA
“The art of the future (which will disappear, like everything else): Imitate nature in an approximate way; imitate in particular nature’s way of creating!” – August Strindberg, 1894 On the 100th anniversary of the death of the famous Swedish artist August Strindberg, “The Nature of Disappearance” takes as the exhibition’s point of departure Strindberg’s radical view of art, which he first expressed in his article Du hasard dans la production artistique (“New Forms of Art! Or Chance in Artistic Creation”), November 1894. Strindberg’s paradigmatic rejection of the complete control that the artist could exercise through skill and virtuosity triggered a new chapter in art history. Strindberg’s radical creative experiments and his introduction of the apparently unintentional influenced the famous Norwegian printmaker and painter Edvard Munch. Like the Swedish artist, Munch integrated the elements of chance and accident into his artistic practice through his legendary “kill or cure” treatment. In his work, he did not just mimic the way nature created but rather, he actually let nature create. “Just wait until it has been exposed to a couple of showers, been gashed a little by some sharp nails and so forth, and then been carted around the world in all sorts of miserable, leaking boxes.… Oh yes, in due course I think this could be good! … It only needs a few flaws in order to become really good ….” In Munch’s oeuvre, mildew stains, pronounced water and rust marks, bird droppings, as well as holes and cracks, serve as physical traces of time, as part of the various things that have happened to the painting. The intentionally initiated process of decay becomes part of the work’s aesthetic, and the work becomes the visual expression of transience itself. The natural process partly progresses toward the painting’s total destruction, through which Munch identifies the ephemeral and the fleeting as a deliberate part of his artistic creative process. Even contemporaries of Munch, such as James Abbott McNeill Whistler, the American Impressionist John Henry Twachtman, and the Russian avant-gardist Vladimir Burliuk, also exposed their works to the elements and allowed nature to work with them, albeit less dramatically and consequentially than Munch. Thereby the exhibition explores the nature of disappearance, that is, the concept of the literal, physical loss of the artwork and in doing so further analyzes how artists who have come after Strindberg and Munch not only question the intactness of the object and the artwork but also literally allow nature to create the work and challenge material integrity, ultimately annihilating the art object. With Dada, and in particular with Marcel Duchamp, artists transgressed the classical borders of the work of art in that they no longer placed the production of the work in the foreground but rather constituted life itself as art. With the disappearance of the art object, art became not only an end, but also a means – a process for the artist. The artwork became assailable, vulnerable, and destructible. In the works of Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Robert Smithson and Bas Jan Ader, the object is no longer a necessary condition for artistic creation. Similar to Munch, artists such as Gustav Metzger, Dieter Roth and Mathias Kessler allow the “kill or cure treatment” of natural forces to create, relying on the natural processes of decay, disintegration, and transformation, while Félix González-Torres leaves the physical di
Wide Open School, Hayward Gallery, London
2012Hayward Gallery, South Bank Centre, London
The Hayward Gallery’s Wide Open School was an unusual experiment in learning. Its programme of classes was devised and delivered by over 100 artists from approximately 40 different countries. It is not an art school however. Instead it is a wide-ranging forum where artists lead and facilitate workshops, collaborative projects, collective discussions, lectures and performances about any and all subjects in which they are passionately interested. Artists included: Jalal Toufic Michael Landy Bonnie Camplin Jane and Louise Wilson Susan Philipz Roger Hiorns Jeremy Deller Thomas Hirschhorn Raqs Media Collective Mark Wallinger Yinka Shonibare MBE Dorothy Cross Susan Hiller Carey Young
Sophie Calle, Christian Marclay, Paul Pfeiffer, Walid Raad, Michael Sailstorfer, Carey Young
2012Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, USA
Photographic works by Sophie Calle, Christian Marclay, Paul Pfeiffer, Walid Raad, Michael Sailstorfer and Carey Young.
Specters of the Nineties
2011Marres, Center of Contemporary Art and Culture
Specters of the Nineties presented a selection of art works and practices from the 1990s that could be considered as anticipating the social and political constellations of today and the position of art therein. Curators: Lisette Smits and Matthieu Laurette Artists: Art Club 2000, Sadie Benning, Bernadette Corporation, Plamen Dejanov & Swetlana Heger, Jeremy Deller, Stephan Dillemuth and Hans-Christian Dany, Maria Eichhorn, Annika Eriksson, Andrea Fraser, Rainer Ganahl, Renée Green, Jens Haaning, Pierre Huyghe, Karen Kilimnik, Ben Kinmont, Job Koelewijn, Renée Kool, Aleksandra Mir, Regina Müller, N55, Marylène Negro-Klaus Scherübel, Laurie Parsons, Asier Pérez, Dan Peterman, Hinrich Sachs, Joe Scanlan, Tilo Schulz, Superflex, Apolonija Sustersic, Barbara Visser, Carey Young.
Void if Removed
2011Le Plateau, FRAC Ile de France, Paris
Void if Removed explored the idea of experiences that are simultaneously conceivable and impossible and presents us with situations where observation itself destroys the possibility of observing. More precisely, artworks – sculptures, photographs, videos or performances – that are all the more frustrating and fragile because the phenomena they contain or suggest threaten to evaporate upon being opened. Featured artists : Bas Jan Ader, Eric Baudelaire, Bernard Bazile, Alighiero Boetti, Chris Burden, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Marcel Duchamp, Ceal Floyer, Ryan Gander, Dora García, Joseph Grigely, Ann Veronica Janssens, Jirí Kovanda, João Louro, Julien Loustau, Daniel Pommereulle, Stephen Prina, Anna Maria Maiolino, Man Ray, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson, Carey Young, Rémy Zaugg.
The Accords
2011New Museum, New York
Curated by Sarah Rifky of the Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, The exhibition explored the form of an accord as a representation of mutually agreed-upon principles. In the work of Yael Bartana, Dora Garcia, Wael Shawky, and Carey Young, the exhibition considers the symbolic, political, and discursive dimensions of such consensus. Young presents a set of contracts and statements, in which she considers the relationships between artist, audience, and institution. Garcia, based on her previous works on surveillance and the institution, will embark upon a new work for “The Accords.” Shawky presents a series of new works that build upon his Telematch Sadat (2007), a video in which children enact a version of Anwar El Sadat’s assassination and burial in 1981, following his unpopular signing of the Camp David Accords and the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty. Bartana presents works inspired by her video trilogy called the New Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland. A program of related screenings and workshops have been organized in conjunction with the exhibition.
Memento Park
2010Eastside Projects
Memento Park was a touring solo show by Carey Young which debuted at Eastside Projects, Birmingham before touring to Cornerhouse, Manchester and mima, Middlesbrough. A new video commission, Memento Park (2010), was central to the exhibition, which also surveyed a decade of the artist’s practice, and included a number of the artist's video, telephone-based, photographic and text works.
Contracting Universe
2010Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, USA
A one-person exhibition of photographs, video and cross-media works by Carey Young relating to space law and the general attempt to develop a legal framework for activities in outer space. Young’s idea for the exhibition arose from her ongoing interest in legal language and in law as a conceptual space, as well as a concern with Romanticism, with its iconographic references to the moon and the cosmos. The show aims to use law as a malleable artistic medium, as well as to present law as a separate kind of ‘reality’, one with its own inherent subjectivities and points of fissure.
The Talent Show
2010Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and MoMA PS1
"The Talent Show,” Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; traveled to MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York. December 12, 2010—April 4, 2011, Curated by Peter Eleey. The Talent Show examined a range of relationships between artists, audiences, and participants that model the competing desires for notoriety and privacy marking our present moment. Featured in the exhibition are 18 artists: Stanley Brouwn Chris Burden Sophie Calle Peter Campus Graciela Carnevale Phil Collins Philip-Lorca diCorcia Tehching Hsieh David Lamelas Piero Manzoni Adrian Piper Amie Siegel John Smith Andy Warhol Gillian Wearing Hannah Wilke Shizuka Yokomizo Carey Young
Fall Out
2010Malmo Konsthall, Malmo
artists included: Mircea Cantor, Kirsten Justesen, Olivia Plender, Larissa Sansour Sophie Calle, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Sharon Hayes, Kirsten Justesen, Larissa Sansour & Oreet Ashery, Simon Starling and Carey Young
Corporate Everything
2010Fribourg, Fribourg, France
During Office Hours
2010FEINKOST, Berlin
Taipei Biennial 2010
2010Taipei Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei
One can easily imagine an exhibition of political art, but what about an exhibition on the politics of art? Taipei Biennial 2010 is an attempt to present the politics of art in popular biennialism through exhibition per se. By exploring what a biennial can do and can be, a moment of restraint is afforded in which to set aside political or ethical tirades on global injustice and to reflect on the biennial’s origin, function, size and scale. Artist list: Lara Almarcegui Can Altay Chang Yun-Han Burak Delier Chris Evans Shahab Fotouhi Irwin Christian Jankowski Jao Chia-en Silvia Kolbowski Pak Sheung Chuen Olivia Plender Michael Portnoy Allan Sekula Larry Shao Shi Jin-hua Hito Steyerl Superflex Mario Garcia Torres Claude Wampler Wang Ya-Hui Wong Wai-Yin Yeh Wei-Li Carey Young
The Perfect Exhibition
2010Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, Germany
Artist list: Marcus Coates, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Habib Asal, bioswop.net, Christian Jankowski, Alicja Kwade, Paul Wiersbinski, Adrian Williams, Carey Young
Atopia: Art and the City in the 21st Century
2010Centra de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, Barcelona
The exhibition explores a kind of unease—the awkwardness that exists between the city and the individual. WORKS BY: AES+F, anothermountainman, Alexander Apóstol, Vanessa Beecroft, Sergio Belinchón, Hicham Benohoud, Ákos Birkás, Daniel Canogar, James Casebere, Nuno Cera, Loulou Cherinet, Tiffany Chung, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Oleg Dou, Tim Eitel, Carlos Garaicoa, Dionisio González, Douglas Gordon, Andreas Gursky, José Antonio Hernández-Díez, Carlos Irijalba, David LaChapelle, Lawrence Lemaoana, Rogelio López Cuenca & Elo Vega, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Enrique Marty, Emeka Okereke, Erwin Olaf, George Osodi, Adrian Paci, Evan Penny, Gino Rubert, Thomas Ruff, Dana Schutz, Montserrat Soto, Baltazar Torres, Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, Vivek Vilasini, Pedro Vizcaino, Erwin Wurm, Carey Young.
The Philosophy of Money / A Filosofia do Dinheiro
2010Museu da Cidade (City Museum), Lisbon
The Talent Show
2010Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; MoMA PS1, New York
In recent years, television's reality shows and talent competitions have offered people a conflicted chance at fame, while various kinds of Web-based social media have pioneered new forms of communication that people increasingly use to perform their private lives as public theater. During the same period, governments worldwide have asserted vast new powers of surveillance, placing unwitting "participants" on an entirely different kind of stage. Against this backdrop, The Talent Show examines a range of relationships between artists, audiences, and participants that model the competing desires for notoriety and privacy marking our present moment. Ranging from seemingly benevolent partnerships to those that appear to exploit their subjects, many of the works in the exhibition animate the tensions between exhibitionism and voyeurism, and raise challenging ethical questions around issues of authorship, power, and control. Curated by Peter Eleey. Artist list: Stanley Brouwn, Chris Burden, Sophie Calle, Peter Campus, Graciela Carnevale, Phil Collins, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Tehching Hsieh, David Lamelas, Piero Manzoni, Adrian Piper, Amie Siegel, John Smith, Andy Warhol, Gillian Wearing, Hannah Wilke, Shizuka Yokomizo, Carey Young
Ständige Rezeption (Permanent Reception)
2010Galerie nächst St. Stephan - Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Vienna
Curated by Clemens von Wedemeyer, artists included: Douglas Gordon, David Lamelas, Hito Steyerl, Arnold von Wedemeyer, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Carey Young
World as Stage (Die Welt als Bühne)
2009Neue Berliner Kunstverein (NBK), Berlin
Many artists today work with the theatrical aspect of staging the self in everyday life. The exhibition Die Welt als Bühne (The World as Stage) uses the increasing trend towards lifestyle theater as an opportunity to confront ourselves with alternative life models and to show how existing forms of self-staging can be reinterpreted in an emancipatory fashion. Artists: Tamy Ben-Tor, Claus Carstensen/Peter Bonde/Thomas Andersen, Mads Lynnerup, Jan Mančuška, HuskMitNavn, Jan Northoff, Tilman Wendland, Carey Young Book Series “n.b.k. Discourse” To accompany the exhibition, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König published 'Die Welt als Bühne' by Solvej Helweg Ovesen, 126 pages with color illustrations, German/English.
Feedforward. The Angel of History
2009LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón, Spain
Feedforward. The Angel of History addressed the current moment in history where the wreckage of political conflict and economic inequality is piling up, while globalized forces—largely enabled by the “progress” of digital information technologies—inexorably feed us forward. The exhibition, curated by Steve Dietz (Artistic Director of the 01SJ Biennial) and Christiane Paul (Director of the Media Studies Graduate Program, New School, NY; Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art) features 29 artworks by 27 artists and artist teams. Artists included: AES+F, Paul Chan, Nancy Davenport, Cao Fei, Daniel García Andújar, Fernando García-Dory, Goldin + Senneby, Harwood, Wright, Yokokoji, Knowbotic Research + Peter Sandbichler, Langlands + Bell, Jennifer + Kevin McCoy, Margot Lovejoy, Naeem Mohaiemen, Carlos Motta, Trevor Paglen, Carey Young
Impossible Exchange
2009Frieze Projects, Frieze Art Fair
Curators Filipa Oliveira and Miguel Amado presented a group of artists’ commissions that played on the transactional nature of the art fair. From the Arte Contempo stand, visitors were invited to engage in a number of activities that reversed or subverted the usual exchange of money for goods or services. Artists: Fia Backstrom, Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle (e-flux), Carolina Caycedo, Carey Young
Carey Young: Uncertain Contracts
2009Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design
Solo exhibition. Carey Young explores current political, social and ethical issues by focusing on increased commercialization in both personal and public domains. This exhibition features a selection of the artist's videos and works in other media, as well as her vinyl wall installation Declared Void (2005), recently acquired by the Museum.
Void of Memory
2009Artsonje Center, Seoul
Artists included: Ai Weiwei, Christian Boltanski, Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Shilpa Gupta, Mona Hatoum, Runa Islam, Chosil Kil, Lee Bul, Christian Marclay, Aiko Miyanaga, Shimabuku, Taro Shinoda, Bob and Roberta Smith, Nedko Solakov, Camila Sposati, Sulki & Min, U Sunok, Jun Yang, Yangachi, Tomoko Yoneda, Carey Young
Pattern Recognition
2009City Art Gallery, Leicester
Speech Acts
2009Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis
Telephonic Works (art Using Telephones)
A series of telephone call centre works presented as Young's first museum solo show in the United States. The museum visitor, upon picking up each phone, becomes both a listener and a performer, in dialogue with live agents scripted and trained by the artist.
Counter Offer
2009The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada
Solo survey show of Carey Young's works since 1999, staged in conjunction with a concurrent solo show by Lawrence Weiner at the same venue.
Commentary
2009Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Works by Jonathan Borofsky, Sam Durant, Wayne Gonzales, Hans Haacke, Glenn Ligon, Walid Raad, Kelley Walker, Meg Webster, and Carey Young. From Jonathan Borofsky’s painting of the Soviet flag to Hans Haacke’s reappropriations of Paine Webber’s advertisements, from Sam Durant’s mirror spray-painted with slogans from May 1968 to Carey Young’s contractual take on constitutional rights, this show presents a variety of artistic responses to social upheavals, past and present, in their differences and striking sameness.
The Space of the Work and the Place of the Object
2009SculptureCenter, New York
'The Space of the Work and the Place of the Object' considered the status of the art object within the context of its production. The artists in this exhibition all make objects that reflect the facts and fissures of their production. Each artwork is concerned with the conditions in which art and meaning are made and circulated, turning them to their own advantage, or sometimes ignoring or disrupting them. Artists: Walead Beshty, Melanie Gilligan, Gabriel Kuri, Michael Rakowitz, Blake Rayne, Karin Schneider, Simon Starling, Carey Young
Deceitful Moon
2009Hayward Gallery Project Space, London
Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, Deceitful Moon is an exhibition in the Hayward Gallery Project Space that explores the moon as a site for misinformation, misrepresentation and mistrust. Curated by Tom Morton. Featured artists: MATTHEW DAY JACKSON & DAVID TOMPKINS, GRANT MORRISON & CAMERON STEWART, ALEKSANDRA MIR, TOM DALE, WILLIAM HOGARTH, AMALIA PICA, SAM PORRITT, KAREN RUSSO, JOHANNES VOGL, KEITH WILSON, CAREY YOUNG
How to do Things with Words
2009Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York
Soft Manipulation
2008Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg
An exhibition curated by Maria Lind, Zoltan Eric and Enrico Lunghi. The invited artists all share an inquisitive stance towards the social realities produced by these means of 'soft manipulation': surveillance, data gathering, biometric techniques of identification and above all the manipulative potential of the mass media. The artists included in the show were: Köken Ergun, Sagi Groner, Per Hasselberg, Saskia Holmkvist, Andreja Kuluncic;, Julia Meltzer & David Thorne, Carlos Motta, Rabih Mroué, An-My Lê, Ferhat Özgür, Jenny Perlin, Lisi Raskin, Bert Theis, Måns Wrange, Carey Young, Katarina Zdjelar, Artur Zmijewski
Carey Young: Mutual Release
2008Thomas Dane Gallery, London
CAREY YOUNG - MUTUAL RELEASE Thomas Dane Gallery and ELECTRA are pleased to announce Mutual Release, a new commission consisting of print, text and video works based on a legal theme by the artist Carey Young. Can the legal contract be a form of art? Working closely with a team of lawyers specialising in media and intellectual property law, Carey Young has created a series of new works which invite the viewer to enter into, or be privy to contractual relationships based on viewing, owning and collecting art. By treating the law as an artistic medium, the artist allows the viewer to experience the otherwise abstract space of the contract. In the show, visitors will be offered a free work, which acquires the status of a work of art only once it has been signed by them. From then on, the owners and the artist enter into a contract, which ends only with the death of the artist and / or the owner. Art becomes bound to life and death. In a text work which plays on the legacies of Institutional Critique, the artist and the gallery enter into a contract which offers each 'complete mutual release'. In a new video, we see an actor interpret legal terms from a commercial contract as a form of acting exercise. With legally-trained executives increasingly running movie studios, news agencies and universities, Mutual Release addresses the legal 'lock down' of contemporary cultural life. Through this exhibition the artist further develops her interest in both the performative and the conceptual dimension of the law to explore its limits and to destablise its language. --- Offer and Exchange: Sites of Negotiation in Contemporary Art is a series of site-specific commissions inviting artists using legal contracts as artistic frameworks. Each commission has been conceived for one of the following sites in which art is made visible: (i) the commercial gallery; (ii) the corporate collection; (iii) the art magazine; (iv) the public institution; (v) the private collection; (vi) the auction house; (viii) the art fair. Mutual Release by Carey Young explores contractual relationships in the context of the commercial gallery. Carey Young has exhibited widely both in the UK and internationally, recently with a solo show at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2007), and exhibiting in Performa 05 Biennial (2005), at Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2004) and John Hansard Gallery, Southampton & touring show (2001-2). Her work has appeared in numerous group shows including: A Short History of Performance Part II, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2003); Sharjah Biennial 7, Sharjah (2005), British Art Show 6, BALTIC, Newcastle & tour (2005-06); How to Improve the World, Hayward Gallery, London (2006); Moscow Biennale 2, Moscow (2007); Islands and Ghettoes, Heidelberger Kunstverein (2008), Business as Usual, Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2008), and the performance series Hey Hey Glossolalia, curated by Creative Time, staged in New York (May 2008). In 2009 she will have solo shows at The Power Plant, Toronto, the Museum of Contemporary Art St Louis and Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis. For more info on her work see www.careyyoung.com Legal Team Robert Lands is a Partner and Head of Intellectual Property & Media at London-based law firm Finers Stephens Innocent. Dr. Jaime Stapleton is an Associate Research Fellow at the School of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London. Curators Daniel McClean is a curator and practising lawyer specialising in art law, media
Hypnotic Show
2008Centre Pompidou, Paris
A group exhibition featuring written works by artists, to be experienced under hypnosis. The viewer was hypnotised by a hypnotist before experiencing the exhibition. Artists included: Pierre Huyghe, Will Holder, Joachim Koester, Carey Young
Ours: Democracy in the Age of Branding
2008New School, New York
The exhibition wpresented a range of works by emerging and established international artists that reflected on some of the desires generated and satisfied by democracy—such as choice, participation, freedom of expression, a sense of belonging and the promise of individual success—and assessing whether these values have become associated with the idea of democracy in the way a consumer brand acquires value. Artists: Liam Gillick, Alexis Bhagat, Kota Ezawa, Runo Lagomarsino, Dave Muller, Nadine Robinson, Andrea Geyer and Carey Young, Paul Chan, Sam Durant, Sharon Hayes, Susan Hiller, Ashley Hunt, Emma Kay, Komar & Melamid, Asaf Koriat, Miguel Luciano, Aleksandra Mir, Timo Nasseri, Ariel Orozco, Trevor Paglen, Anri Sala, Hank Willis Thomas, Johan Tiren, Brian Tolle, Judi Werthein, and The Yes Men.
Business as Usual
2008MOCAD, Detroit
Business as Usual explores the complex intersection of art and commerce over the past decade. Both individually and collectively, the artists featured in the exhibition — Bernadette Corporation, Guyton\Walker, Josephine Meckseper, Carey Young, and Sislej Xhafa — explore the role and function of art in a culture increasingly dominated by the dictates of the market, both artistic and otherwise.
Hey Hey Glossolalia: Exhibiting the Voice
2008Various venues in New York City
In May 2008, Creative Time presented Hey Hey Glossolalia, a month-long series of events that explored the use of the voice in contemporary art. The projects included in Hey Hey Glossolalia combined sound, image, performance, and writing to investigate issues not limited to, the peripheries of speech, the charged relationship between speaker and audience, and how the artist (and curator) can speak with and through the voice of others. Artists included: RYan Gander, Liam Gillick, Mark Leckey, Genesis P-Orridge, Adam Pendleton, Frances Stark, Bedwyr Williams, Carey Young
Oppositions and Dialogues
2008Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork (& tour to Kunstverein Hannover)
Islands and Ghettoes
2008Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, Germany
The exhibition ISLANDS+GHETTOS drew attention to the strategies of territorial isolation and social seclusion in 21st century cities. Artists included: Alexander Apostol, Atelier Van Lieshout, Dorit Margreiter, Peter Coffin, Harun Farocki, Peter Fend, Andreas Fogarasi, Kristjan Gudmundsson, Emily Jacir, Armin Linke, Eyal Weizman in cooperation with Renato Rinaldi, Rivane Neuenschwander, Ed Osborn, Marjetica Potrc, Sean Snyder, Javier Téllez, Carey Young.
Les Ateliers de Rennes Biennial of Contemporary Art, Rennes
2008Les Ateliers de Rennes
Terms of Use
2008Montehermoso Cultural Centre
If/Then
2007Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Paula Cooper Gallery is pleased to present If/Then, an exhibition of new work by London-based artist Carey Young, which will run from December 1, 2007, through January 12, 2008. The exhibition includes works that develop Young's interest in corporate and legal languages and their effects on human agency. For example, Cautionary Statement is a text based on corporate disclaimers published in annual reports that function as legal devices allowing a company to make “forward-looking” statements (statements about the future), while protecting it if those statements don’t come to pass. The placement of the piece above the receptionist’s desk highlights the context of the gallery as a space in which such forward-looking statements may or may not be uttered. Body Techniques (2007) is a new series of photographs that considers the interrelationships between art and globalized commerce. The title of the series refers to a phrase originally coined by Marcel Mauss and developed by Pierre Bourdieu as habitus, which describes how an operational context or behavior can be affected by institutions or ideologies. Set in the vast building sites of Dubai and Sharjah’s futuristic corporate landscape, we see Young alone and dressed in a suit, her actions reworking some of the classic performance-based works associated with Conceptual art, including pieces by Richard Long, Bruce Nauman, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Dennis Oppenheim and Valie Export. In thus recasting earlier works centered around the physicality of the body in time and space, it is ambiguous whether the artist is molding herself to the landscape or exploring ways of resisting it. The locations for Young's photographs are a series of empty, uninhabited 'new build' developments reminiscent of Las Vegas, rising from the desert's tabula rasa aimed at bombastic luxury and spectacle and intended for thousands of incoming Western corporate executives. The architectural style is consummate ‘global village’ - a business theme park composed of swathes of multinational HQs and Italianate McVillas. These non-places could eventually compose an entire world-view: a hyperreal, corporate vision of utopia. Half-constructed backdrops are used as a 'stage' for the action, with the artist appearing as one tiny individual, overwhelmed, dislocated from, or even belittled by the corporate surroundings, while dressed up to play a role within it. The exhibition also includes Product Recall, a new video in which the artist is asked to match from memory a series of advertising slogans with their corresponding brand. The slogans belong to global companies (many of which are active as art sponsors) that brand themselves around “imagination” or “inspiration.” It is unclear whether the artist is attempting to remember the slogans, or to forget them. For Inventory, the artist weighed herself and used scientific calculations of the mass and current market value of each chemical element in her body to determine her “total market value.” This amount is expressed in Pounds Sterling on the wall and is accompanied by a print of the calculation data. Since the physique of the artist and the market value of her constituent chemical elements may fluctuate over time, future versions of this work may display a different value. The text for Subroutine is based on a 1935 poem by the Czech lyric poet Frantisek Halas translated in Perl, a universally popular computer language used to write applications for desktop computers. A subroutin
The Dotted Line
2007BRIC Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
Curated by Colby Chamberlain, winner of the Fall 2007 Lori Ledis Award for Curatorial Initiative What are the aesthetics of administration? The Dotted Line presented work that assumes the form of official documents ubiquitous to everyday life. Artists in this exhibition were Art Hijack Past (Trong Nguyen and Elana Rubinfeld), Kate Bingaman-Burt, Stephanie Brooks, Eric Doeringer, Patrick Killoran, Jill Magid, Ed McGowin, Filip Noterdaeme (The Homeless Museum), Michael Rakowitz, and Carey Young. The work investigated the absurdities inherent to bureaucratic procedures, as well as the emotional content that is often obscured by institutional language.
For Sale
2007Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art, Lisbon
Curated by Jens Hoffmann, with works by Art & Language, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Tauba Auerbach, John Baldessari, Daniel Buren, Arabella Campbell, Maria Eichhorn, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Ceal Floyer, Andrea Fraser & Jeff Preiss, Ryan Gander, Jordan Kantor, John Knight, Louise Lawler, Tim Lee, Renata Lucas, Shana Lutker, Kris Martin, Jonathan Monk, Roman Ondák, Raymond Pettibon, Tino Sehgal, Andreas Slominski, Ron Terada, Mario Garcia Torres, and Carey Young. This gathering of around thirty international artists presents instances where the status of the artwork and its display in a commercial setting was conceptualized and foregrounded.
Global Feminisms
2007Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
Artists included Emily Jacir, Anna Gaskell, Tania Bruguera, Sigalit Landau, Tracey Emin, Sam Taylor-Wood, Sarah Lucas, Pipilotti Rist, Kara Walker, Tracey Rose, Carey Young. Global Feminisms was the first international exhibition exclusively dedicated to feminist art from 1990 to the present. The show consisted of work by approximately eighty women artists from around the world. Its goal was not only to showcase a large sampling of contemporary feminist art from a global perspective but also to move beyond the specifically Western brand of feminism that has been perceived as the dominant voice of feminist and artistic practice since the early 1970s. The exhibition was arranged thematically and features the work of important emerging and mid-career artists.
Consideration
2007Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis
Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, is pleased to announce Consideration, a solo show by London-based artist Carey Young which features a series of legally-enforceable contracts between artist and viewer.
Stock Zero: The 2nd Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud
2007Moscow Federation Tower, Moscow
An exhibition exploring the 'landscape' of capitalism: artists postproducing logos, brands, products and signs, along with artists describing the processes of the capitalist economy or exploring its margins. Artists: Peter Сoffin, Loris Greaud, Kendell Geers, Jonathan Hernandez, Josephine Meckseper, Flavia Muller Medeiros, Gianni Motti, Elena Nemkova, Ester Partegas, Daniel Pflumm, Franck Scurti, Meredyth Sparks, Simon Starling, Superflex (Rasmus Nielsen, Jakob Fenger and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen), Barthelemy Toguo, Johannes Wohnseifer, Carey Young.
Failure
2007Landesgalerie, Linz, Austria
Artists included Martin Kippenberger, Christian Jankowski, Peter Land, Sean Landers, Alexis Rockman, Julian Rosefeldt, Carey Young. The exhibition brought together key positions within contemporary art that engage in different ways with the topic of failure. The spectrum ranged from psychological aspects such as coping with individual failure and the fear of failing via socio-political problematics to ironic interpretations of failure. With exhibition catalogue.
From 60 to 7: The Politics of the 'Private'
2007Henie Onstad Art Centre, Oslo
No, Future
2007Bloomberg Space, London
Happy Believers: Werkleitz Biennale
2006Werkleitz Biennale, Halle, Germany
Mostly Harmless: a Performance Series
2006Govett Brewster Art Gallery, Plymouth, New Zealand
British Art Show 6
2006Tour of major galleries in England
The selection concentrated on artists who have made a significant contribution to British art over the past five years. The British Art Show 6 is organised by the Hayward Gallery as part of its Hayward Gallery Touring programme. The tour began at Baltic, Gateshead and continued to Manchester, Nottingham and Bristol. Artist List: Tomma Abts Haluk Akakçe Phillip Allen Tonico Lemos Auad Claire Barclay Anna Barriball Breda Beban Zarina Bhimji Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska public works Ergin Çavuþoðlu Gordon Cheung Adam Chodzko Marcus Coates Nathan Coley Phil Collins Enrico David Chris Evans Doug Fishbone Siobhán Hapaska Roger Hiorns Matthew Houlding Richard Hughes Marine Hugonnier Gareth Jones juneau/projects/ Kerstin Kartscher Janice Kerbel Mark Leckey Hew Locke Andrew McDonald Christina Mackie Goshka Macuga Daria Martin Heather and Ivan Morison Rosalind Nashashibi Nils Norman Saskia Olde Wolbers Silke Otto-Knapp Toby Paterson Paul Rooney Eva Rothschild Zineb Sedira Lucy Skaer Alia Syed David Thorpe Mark Titchner Rebecca Warren Gary Webb Carey Young
Jump into Cold Water
2006Shedhalle, Zurich
Arbeit / Labor/ Work
2006Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork (& tour to Kunstverein Hannover)
How to Improve the World
2006Hayward Gallery, London
An exhibition of British art from the last six decades. How to Improve the World explored what is arguably the most fertile era in the history of British art, a period when artists working in this country have a made a global impact. Artists included: Francis Bacon, Patrick Caulfield, Jeremy Deller, Lucian Freud, Gilbert & George, Liam Gillick, Mona Hartoum, Barbara Hepworth, Susan Hiller, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Richard Long, Sarah Lucas, Steve McQueen, Henry Moore, Chris Ofili, Bridget Riley, Mark Titchner, Cereth Wyn-Evans, Carey Young.
Body: New Art from the UK
2006Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver
This collaborative exhibition, co-curated by the Vancouver Art Gallery and the British Council, presented the work of 15 British artists in Canada’s foremost contemporary art museum, and subsequently toured to museums in Ottawa, Oakville, Edmonton and Nova Scotia. Artists included: Fiona Banner, Martin Boyce, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Tacita Dean, Tracey Emin, Douglas Gordon, Melanie Jackson, Sarah Lucas, Cornelia Parker, Sam Taylor-Wood, Mark Wallinger, Rebecca Warren, Gillian Wearing, Cathy Wilkes and Carey Young. The artists represented are neither of a single generation or geographical location but share common concerns, along with eclectic working methodologies; the exhibition encompassing installation, sculpture, video, painting and drawing.
Consideration
2005Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Part of PERFORMA 05, the the first biennial of visual art performance in New York City. PERFORMA presents Consideration, London-based artist Carey Young’s first solo exhibition in the US. It features a series of legally-enforceable contracts between artist and viewer and is hosted by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Created in conjunction with a legal team, the text, video and performative works entice the viewer into agreements that explore notions of individual autonomy, freedom of speech and the social contract. Engaging participants in a series of contractual relationships, Young dissects the viewer’s experience of the exhibition, from accepting the exhibition invitation, to entering the exhibition space, to voicing an opinion about the works. With legally-trained executives increasingly running movie studios, news agencies and universities, Consideration interrogates the legal ‘lock down’ of contemporary cultural life and develops Young’s interest in legal structures, language and the performative.
Disclaimer
2005IBID Projects, London
Disclaimer was an exhibition of work by Carey Young, which was commissioned and first shown by the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds in 2004. Disclaimer presents new text and video works which explore the connections between legal disclaimers and notions of negative space.
E-flux Video Rental
2005Kunstwerke, Berlin
Carey Young
2005Trafo Gallery, Budapest
Trafo Gallery is pleased to announce a solo show by London-based artist Carey Young. The show will feature Young's notable video 'I am a Revolutionary' (2001) alongside a new performance work developed especially for the exhibition.
What Business Are You In?
2005Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta
Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy
2005ZKM Karlsruhe
curated by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel. The exhibition Making Things Public addresses the challenge of renewing politics by applying to it the spirit of art and science. This unusual exhibition builds on the Iconoclash exhibition (ZKM 2002), which dealt with the crisis of representation in art, whereas Making Things Public tackles the problem of representation in politics. In this pioneering project over one hundred artists, scientists, sociologists, philosophers and historians re-explore the term 'politics'.
Sharjah Biennial 7
2005Sharjah Art Foundation
artists included: - Allan Sekula - Kelley Walker - Santiago Sierra - Tarek Al-Ghoussein -Terry Atkinson - Maja Bajevic - Mohamed El Baz - Ursula Biemann - Luchezar Boyadjiev - Sonia Boyce - Christoph Buchel & Giovanni Carmine - Claude Closky - Phil Collins - Minerva Cuevas - Zeyad Dajani - Rineke Djikstra - Heri Dono - Solvej Dufour Andersen - Fouad Elkoury - Anne-Marie Filaire - Yang Fudong - Carlos Garaicoa - Rula Halawani - Karin Hanssen - Dirk Herzog - IRWIN - Emily Jacir - Mohammed Kazem - San Keller - Anna Kleberg - - Tim Lee - Zoe Leonard - Tracey Moffatt - Leyla Al Mutannakker - Ingrid Mwangi - Moataz Nasr - Olaf Nicolai - Otobong Nkanga - Marcel Odenbach - Mark Pilkington - Marwan Rechmaoui - Mario Rizzi - Natascha Sadr Haghighian - Jayce Salloum - Shirana Shahbazi - Solmaz Shahbazi - Hassan Sharif - Suha Shoman - Nedko Solakov - Beat Streuli - Vivan Sundaram - Erik Van Lieshout - Nari Ward - Carey Young
Arbeit / Labor/ Work
2005Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (& tour to Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork and Kunstverein Hannover)
The theme of this exhibition project was work / labor, which, over the past four decades, has become a central focus of the visual arts. Proceeding from artistic positions from the 1960s and 1970s, and extending to very recent works, the exhibition deals with issues such as women’s work, globalization and globalized gender relations or forms of transition from socialist to capitalist work. Artists included: Conrad Atkinson, Ursula Biemann, Harun Farocki, Paul Graham, Mary Kelly, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Adrian Paci, Martha Rosler, Mladen Stilinović (HR), Anne Tallentire (UK), Jeff Wall, Carey Young
Tirana Biennale 3
2005Various venues across Tirana
Critical Societies - Art, Critique and the Promises of Capitalism
2005Badischer Kunstverein
Group show with international artists including Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Runa Islam, Stephen Willats, LA Raeven, John Baldessari, Carey Young.
Trade Show
2005Mass MOCA
Disclaimer
2004Henry Moore Institute
Following her fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute, Carey Young (b. 1970) will make four new works for Gallery 4. Young is a London-based artist who has become recognised for works across a variety of media which investigate the increasing incorporation of the personal and public domains into the realm of the commercial. Young’s show at the Henry Moore Institute will explore the connections between legal 'disclaimers' and notions of negative space.
Viral Marketing
2004Kunstverein Muenchen, Munich, Germany
As part of her series of virus-like interventions into the marketing and communications structure of the Kunstverein, two new commissions by Carey Young (London) combine specific 'pro-revolution' references within a system of marketing display and distribution. Curated by Maria Lind.
Carey Young
2004Index, Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden
Index announces Carey Young's first solo exhibition in Sweden. Carey Young, who is based in London, has become recognised for her works across a variety of media which investigate the increasing incorporation of the personal and public domains into the realm of the commercial. Young's projects often centre on notions of language, training and performance, and take an ambiguous political stance in order to create a web of complex associations and questions for the viewer. At Index, Young will show a variety of recent works across media including video, slide projection and will debut Colour Guide, a new installation exploring the implications of the increasing corporatisation of the photographic industry.
I Believe in You, digital commission by Film & Video Umbrella, launched at Tate Britain, London.
2004Tate Britain, London
I Believe in You was an internet-based project which employed the use of text messaging and which was launched at Tate Britain.
I am not a feminist. I am normal.
2004Austrian Cultural Forum, London
Black Friday (Excercises in Hermeneutics)
2004Galerie Kam, Berlin
Cycle Tracks will Abound in Utopia
2004Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne
Tales of the City (curated by the British Council)
2004Arte Fiera, Bologna
A Short History of Performance, Part II.
2003Whitechapel Gallery, London
A Short History of performance Part II was the second in a series of performance seasons at the Whitechapel, curated by Iwona Blazwick and Andrea Tarsia. Artists included Joseph Beuys, Andrea Fraser, Mark Dion, Robert Morris, Inventory, Walid Raad/The Atlas Group, Martha Rosler and Carey Young.
Dust to Dusk
2003Konsthall Charlottenborg, Copenhagen
World Question Centre (Reloaded), curated by Jens Hoffman
2003BAK, Utrecht
Utopia Station
2003Venice Biennale
Major exhibition curated by Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Part of the 50th Venice Biennale.
Gesellschaftsbilder/ Images of Society
2003Kunstmuseum Thun, Thun, Austria
The exhibition Gesellschaftsbilder presented works dealing with contemporary society by almost a dozen international artists. These works mirror, comment or reflect on structures, organizations or systems of human community. Participating artists: Pierre Bismuth, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Mona Hatoum, Thomas Hirschhorn, William Kentridge, Ulrike Kuschel, Guillermo Kuitca, Graham Little, Juan Muñoz, Olaf Nicolai, João Onofre, Anri Sala, Rosemarie Trockel, Carey Young
24/7: Vilnius/New York, curated by Raimundas Malauskas
2003Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius
artists included: 16 Beaver Street Group, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Bik Van der Pol, Daniel Bozhkov, Bureau of Inverse Technology, Club Mikshys, Phil Collins, Rainer Ganahl, Hope Ginsburg, Tehching Hsieh, Emily Jacir,Kristina Inciuraite, Natalie Jeremijenko, Matthew Keegan, Matthieu Laurette, Pia Lindman, Adrian Piper, William Pope L., M&M Proyectos, Jonathan Monk, Radical Software Group / Edas Telycenas, Arturas Raila, Martha Rosler, Beatriz Santiago, Trebor Scholz, Tino Sehgal, Temporary Services, Valie Export Society, Andy Warhol, Carey Young
Beck's Futures
2003ICA, London and tour
Moskva ter / Moscow Square
2003Museum Ludwig, Budapest
Electric Earth
2003International tour organised by the British Council
An exhibition of video-based works presenting a new wave of UK artists currently appearing in major exhibitions such as Documenta, the Turner Prize and Beck's Futures. A major focus of the exhibition examines the artist as an outsider who operates within and plays with pre-determined social structures. Curated by the British Council. Artists included: Adam Chodzko, Volker Eichelmann & Roland Rust, Folk Archive, Luke Fowler, Rob Kennedy, Torsten Lauschmann, Mark Leckey, Hilary Lloyd, Oliver Payne & Nick Relph, Paul Rooney, Stephen Sutcliffe, Szuper Gallery, Wolfgang Tillmans, Mark Titchner, Carey Young. The exhibition opened at the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, before travelling to Moscow and touring Russia for 3 months. European and South American tours followed.
Exchange and Transform (Arbeitstitel), curated by Maria Lind
2002Kunstverein Muenchen, Munich, Germany
Group exhibition featuring the works of Simon Starling, Minerva Cuevas, Vera Lutter, Bik van der Pol, Oliver Ressler, Carey Young and others
STRIKE (curated by Gavin Wade)
2002Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton
The Communications Department (curated by Alex Farquharson)
2001Wilkinson Gallery, London
Nothing (curated by Ele Carpenter and Graham Gussin)
2001Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland; Rooseum, Malmo; CAC, Vilnius; Mead Gallery, Warwick
Ausgetraumt (Without Dreams)
2001Secession, Vienna
Major group exhibition curated by Kathrin Rhomberg, including works by Pawel Althamer, Joze Barši, Thomas Baumann, Cezary Bodzianowski, Copenhagen Free University (Henriette Heise & Jakob Jakobsen), Josef Dabernig, Ricarda Denzer, Tomislav Gotovac, Renée Green, Elisabeth Grübl, Florian Hecker, Patrick Jolley & Reynold Reynolds, Martin Kaltner, Július Koller, N.I.C.J.O.B., Deimantas Narkevicius, Roman Ondák, George Ovashvili, Mladen Stilinovic, Werner Würtinger, Carey Young.
Nothing Ventured
2001fig-1, London
Fig-1 staged Carey Young's first solo exhibition. The exhibition featured 'Nothing Ventured', a new telephone-based work by the artist. Picking up a phone receiver located in the gallery, the visitor was connected direct to a telephone call centre located in Souh-East England which was hired by the artist to ‘represent’ her. Resulting conversations between callers and call centre agents were recorded and transcribed and form the documentation of the piece, which has subsequently been exhibited in its own right on a number of occasions.
Carey Young: Everything You've Heard is Wrong
2001Wilkinson Gallery, London
Week-long screening of Carey Young's video 'Everything You've Heard is Wrong'
Business as Usual
2001John Hansard Gallery, Southampton and tour
The first touring solo show by Carey Young, curated and organised by Film and Video Umbrella, London and featuring a number of newly commissioned works in video, photography and installation. The show originated at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton before touring to Angel Row, Nottingham and Firstsite, Colchester. Alongside the show, the first monograph on the artist's work, 'Carey Young: Incorporated' was published by Film and Video Umbrella in association with John Hansard Gallery.
Continuum001, curated by Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt
2000CCA, Glasgow
Group show including works by Liam Gillick, Superflex, Nathan Coley, Julia Scher, Carey Young
Media_Art_2000, Seoul Biennale (curated by Jeremy Millar & Barbara London)
2000Seoul Museum of Contemporary Art
CRASH! Corporatism and Complicity
1999ICA, London
MayDay: Communities and Communication (curated by Jeremy Millar)
1999The Photographers' Gallery, London
EXIT, Art & Cinema at the End of the Century
1999Chisenhale Gallery, London
Atomic (curated by The Arts Catalyst)
1998International tour
Touring group exhition on the theme of the nuclear age, with works by James Acord, Mark Waller, Carey Young.
Zones of Disturbance / Zonen der Ver-Storung
1997Steirisher Herbst, Graz
Group show with works by Pierre Huyghe, Elija-Liisa Athila, Phyllis Baldino, Heath Bunting, Olga Chernysheva, Serge Comte, Veronika Dreier, Rainer Ganahl, Johan Grimonprez, Graham Harwood, Deborah Holland, Christian Jankowski, LOKAL TV, Kristin Lucas, Dorit Margreiter, Tracey Moffatt, Ariane Müller, Muntean/Rosenblum, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Tony Oursler, Mathias Poledna, Linda Post, Graham Ramsay, Friona Rukschcio, Wally Salner & Meike Schmidt-Gleim, Ann-Sofi Sidén, Peter Spillmann, Lisa Strömbeck, Alma Suljević, Milica Tomić, Momoyo Torimitsu, Gillian Wearing, Carey Young and Jasmila Žbanić
Publications
Artistic License: Joan Kee interviews Carey Young
Conference keynote: Subject to Contract: Law as an Artistic Medium. Keynote given at 'Art in Law in Art' international conference, University of Western Australia, Perth
Subject to Contract: Law as an Artistic Medium Since 2003, visual artist Carey Young has developed a number of works that are also functional legal instruments, and which have conceptualised and explored law as an artistic medium. Young collaborates with legal advisors to make artworks in installation, video, performance, print, sculpture and photography which also operate as bespoke legal instruments. These have taken such diverse forms as disclaimers, contracts, offers, licenses, cautionary statements and other legal devices. Her works have addressed and critiqued disparate legal fields including human rights, inheritance law, intellectual property and ‘outer space’ law. Experimenting with ideas of time, space and physicality in relation to law, this body of artistic work explores law as a separate kind of ‘reality’, one with its own inherent subjectivities and points of breakdown. Through an illustrated paper, Young will discuss a number of these projects and their implications and context as works of art and ‘works of law’. As such, she will consider some ways in which visual art can address, expand and confound the growing discussions around an aesthetics of law, whilst also posing broader questions around the relations between jurisprudence, gender, time, rhetoric and fiction.
Law in Camera
Some Fictions are Better than Others
Carey Young’s artistic work uses a variety of media, including photography, video, installation and performance, and often explores themes such as portraiture, landscape and the sublime by using found tools, gestures and language from the worlds of the multinational corporation or global law firm. Her paper will centre on a screening of her video artwork Palais de Justice (2017), recently exhibited in major solo exhibitions at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York and Dallas Museum of Art. The piece was shot at the Palais de Justice in Brussels, the main courthouse of Belgium. Contradicting the familiar patriarchal culture of law, Young’s camera depicts female judges and lawyers sitting at trial, directing proceedings and delivering judgments. The film subtly builds a counter-narrative: a legal system seemingly centred on, and perhaps controlled by women, as if male presence may be optional or unnecessary in this particular future. Young filmed through a series of circular windows in courtroom doors, always shooting without the knowledge or permission of her subjects or the court. The windows and the camera’s lens are portrayed as an interwoven series of oculi, in which we watch justice as performance, and are ourselves implicated as witnesses and voyeurs. Carey Young’s solo exhibitions include Dallas Museum of Art (2017), Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2017), Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2013); Eastside Projects, Birmingham and tour (2010–2011); the Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis, and The Power Plant, Toronto (both 2009), Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2004) and John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2002). Young has recently participated in group exhibitions at Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2017), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2017), Aspen Art Museum (2016), Centre Pompidou (2015), Tate Liverpool (2014), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2012), the New Museum, New York (2011), MoMA/PS1, New York (2010) and Tate Britain (2010). She lives and works in London and is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. www.careyyoung.com
Open Justice
Unknown Unknowns: Contemporary Art and Legal Scholarship
For around the last 20 years there has been a significant growth in the number of books, academic conference streams and papers relating to ‘law and aesthetics’, a subset of Critical Legal Studies in which law is examined in relation to visual culture – in particular, in relation to (pre-twentieth century) art history, street art and legal iconography. Concurrently, since the artistic tendency termed ‘Conceptual Art’ emerged in the late 60s and early 70s, a number of notable contemporary artists have gone well beyond postmodern debates around artistic appropriation which have tended to dominate art historical debates around law. These artists have adopted and adapted legal methods, materials and ideas, producing a critique of law and and its societal and cultural after-images. Legal theorists have, to date, been largely unaware of the work of these artists. This essay seeks to redress that balance.
Conference keynote: Subject to Contract: Law as an Artistic Medium
Since 2003, visual artist Carey Young has developed a number of works that are also functional legal instruments, and which have conceptualised and explored law as an artistic medium. Young collaborates with legal advisors to make artworks in installation, video, performance, print, sculpture and photography which also operate as bespoke legal instruments. These have taken such diverse forms as disclaimers, contracts, offers, licenses, cautionary statements and other legal devices. Her works have addressed and critiqued disparate legal fields including human rights, inheritance law, intellectual property and ‘outer space’ law. Experimenting with ideas of time, space and physicality in relation to law, this body of artistic work explores law as a separate kind of ‘reality’, one with its own inherent subjectivities and points of breakdown. Through an illustrated paper, Young will discuss a number of these projects and their implications and context as works of art and ‘works of law’. As such, she will consider some ways in which visual art can address, expand and confound the growing discussions around an aesthetics of law, whilst also posing broader questions around the relations between jurisprudence, gender, time, rhetoric and fiction.
Palais de Justice
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. Young’s camera becomes implicated, either caught within reflections, or through becoming noticed by some of her subjects. The windows and the camera’s lens are suggested as an interwoven series of oculi, in which we watch justice as performance and are ourselves implicated as witnesses and voyeurs. The piece considers the complex relations between lenses, surveillance and ideas of framing or being framed, which are at the core of the law-related work Young has been developing for more than a decade. The piece was acquired by Dallas Museum of Art for their permanent collection.
Black Square (Cell)
Black Square (Cell) is a photographic work in which we see a small square window in a prison door, through which we can make out the inky darkness of a prison cell. The cell beckons to us, whilst slight touches of rust and scratches call to mind the many interned and accused who have undoubtedly occupied its space. The work offers an intentionally ambiguous reflection on the relations between creativity and confinement, or art and institution, as well as ideas of borders and thresholds on to the unknowable or unthinkable. The work was exhibited in Carey Young's solo show at the Dallas Museum of Art, Feb 2 - April 9 2017.
Subject to Contract: Carey Young's artistic work in relation to creative developments in IP law. Paper given within the context of an international workshop on the future of copyright law in relation to art. Harvard University.
In this paper I discussed my artistic relationship to intellectual property law, with a particular focus on works which have proposed new forms and methods within copyright law.
You Have the Body. Paper given at Synaesthesia of Law, international conference, Princeton University. (Invited speaker.)
In 2005 I devised the concept of ‘law as an artistic medium’, and have created a large body of artistic work which explores this idea. These works encompass photography, video, performance and text, and also take the form of legal instruments including contracts, offers and disclaimers. As experimental legal forms, the works often operate at the limits of what is legally possible, and explore law as a form of performance, literature and fiction. Through an illustrated talk I propose to discuss a number of these projects and their implications as both works of art and ‘works of law’. As such, the presentation will consider some ways in which visual art can address (and define) not only aesthetics of law, but law’s ‘plasticity’. This paper was presented at 'Synesthesia of Law', an innovative cross-discplinary conference at Princeton University which brought together the geographically- and disciplinary-dispersed community of established and new voices in critical (legal) studies — scholars, artists and activists– to exchange and collaborate in the development of a new critical discourse, as well as to build stronger links between the study of law and other fields (including political theory, history, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, economic theory, literature, linguistics, gender studies, critical race theory, performativity studies, and media theory). Speakers included Patricia J. Williams, Bernard Harcourt, Eyal Weizman, Peter Goodrich.
Tate Film: Carey Young. Tate Britain.
Carey Young, whose work is represented in the Tate collection, has invited New York-based artist Jill Magid to join her for this screening and talk. As part of an ongoing dialogue, the artists will discuss their respective practices exploring the interface between the psychological, the judicial and the commercial in different ways. Against the backdrop of the increasing authority exercised by corporations, modes of surveillance and other structures of power, the event will consider evolving definitions of appropriation and subjectivity through a selection of the artists’ work in video and other media, and a live discussion in situ.Carey Young, whose work is represented in the Tate collection, has invited New York-based artist Jill Magid to join her for this screening and talk. As part of an ongoing dialogue, the artists will discuss their respective practices exploring the interface between the psychological, the judicial and the commercial in different ways. Against the backdrop of the increasing authority exercised by corporations, modes of surveillance and other structures of power, the event will consider evolving definitions of appropriation and subjectivity through a selection of the artists’ work in video and other media, and a live discussion in situ.
Show Time: Curating contemporary art. Tate Modern.
What are the exhibitions that truly changed the course of the discipline, provoked public reactions and contributed to a more complex understanding of what exhibition-making means today? Curator Jens Hoffmann and artist Carey Young were in discussion to consider questions including the evolving role of a curator, the major changes that have influenced curating and its relationship to art, artists and the wider world. This event coincided with the publication of Jens Hoffmann’s book Show Time: The 50 Most Influential Exhibitions of Contemporary Art, in which he examines the innovations in curatorial practice of the last 25 years. The book’s thematic sections focus on a variety of exhibitions, including those that have explored public space; reflected on globalization; engaged audiences in revolutionary ways; and introduced other/new disciplines such as theatre and architecture into the gallery space. Carey Young’s artistic practice often focuses on the growing influence of corporations and the legal sphere on to individual and collective subjectivity, which she explores using a variety of media including video, photography, installation and performance. Her interest in the inter-connections between economic systems, contemporary culture and the legacy of institutional critique, offer an invaluable contribution to this debate.
Subject to Contract: Law as an Artistic Medium. Paper given at Association of Art Historians conference 2014
My artistic work employs a variety of media, including video, installation, photography, text and performance, and is often concerned with the relationships between the body, language, rhetoric and systems of power. Since 2003 I have developed a number of artistic works that are also functional legal instruments, and which have aimed to use law as a malleable artistic medium. Whilst generally concerned with ideas of jurisprudence and the real, these works have explored diverse areas of legal knowledge such as contract law, intellectual property and ‘outer space’ law. These works have been exhibited at numerous international museums and galleries, and have typically been developed after intensive periods of research, and with the guidance and drafting expertise of a variety of expert lawyers and legal researchers. As experimental legal forms, the works are intended to operate at the limits of what is legally possible, and to present law as a separate kind of ‘reality’, one with its own inherent subjectivities and points of fissure. I propose to discuss a number of these projects and their implications as both works of art and ‘works of law’.
Per/form: How to Do Things with[out] Words
PUBLICATION: A book published alongside the exhibition 'Per/form' at CA2M, Madrid, including texts by Jean-Pierre Cometti, Amelia Jones, Antonio Negri, Chantal Pontbriand, and José Antonio Sanchez. The artists contributed to the book in the form of visual essays. Editor: Chantal Pontbriand. ARTISTS: Mathieu Abonnenc / Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla / Brad Butler & Karen Mirza / Geneviève Cadieux / Jean-Pierre Cometti / Agnès Dahan / Adrian Dan / Angela Detanico & Rafael Lain / Carole Douillard / Cevdet Erek / Köken Ergun / Esther Ferrer / Chiara Fumai / Ryan Gander / Simon Fujiwara / Dora García / Camille Henrot / Sandra Johnston / Amelia Jones / Latifa Laâbissi / La Ribot / Ines Lechleitner / Franck Leibovici / Cristina Lucas / Haroon Mirza / Antonio Negri / Roman Ondák / Falke Pisano / Chantal Pontbriand / Chloé Quenum / Pedro Reyes / José Antonio Sánchez / Julião Sarmento / Ulla von Brandenburg / Carey Young / Héctor Zamora.
Legal Maxims
Legal Maxims is a work consisting of a pair of legal phrases created in white neon. The phrases, ‘WRONG IN ITSELF’ and ‘NOBODY’S THING’, are legal maxims – an ancient and basic form of establishing logic or ideal within the legal field – which operate as a kind of rhetorical shorthand, intended to assist judges in deciding the outcome of cases. Contrary to the precision considered so fundamental to law, and selected by the artist for their philosophical suggestiveness, they seem inherently ambiguous and suggestive of slippages at the core of legal thinking.
Declared Void II
A large installation-based text piece which includes a contract relating to the viewer, the gallery and ideas of citizenship. The work has been exhibited at Migros Museum, Zurich and CA2M, Madrid.
We the People (after Pierre Cavellat)
We the People (after Pierre Cavellat) (2013) is a large-scale photographic work, featuring a judge’s robe and wig hung on a domestic garden washing line. Made in reference to a French judge and amateur artist, Pierre Cavellat, who created artistic works surreptitiously while judging courtroom trials, the image reworks a snapshot made by Cavellat at the start of his retirement. Young here considers law in relation to performance, and compares the official state pomp and power of the judge with the private and vulnerable sphere of the body, whilst the costume subtly suggests a chrysalis, or a moment of submission or servitude.
Carey Young: Subject to Contract
Since the late 1990s, Carey Young has investigated the growing influence of international corporations on the individual in works that span a variety of media including video, performance, text, and installation, and which draw on the tradition of Conceptual art. Notably, she studies how language is transformed by corporate culture, or how contractual structures and their linguistic markers progressively pervade and reshape all domains of life. Like a double agent, she immerses herself in the business or legal worlds, donning the appropriate attire and enacting recommended scenarios in order to examine and question the reach of each institution’s power, and its ability to shape our contemporary reality. The publication was published in conjunction with Carey Young’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland, curated by Raphael Gygax, and offers an overview on her works from 2003 to today. It includes contributions by the artist, Martha Buskirk, Raphael Gygax, and Tirdad Zolghadr. Carey Young has presented her work in numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2010); the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis; and The Power Plant, Toronto (both in 2009); she participated in the Taipei Biennial in 2010, the Moscow Biennial in 2007, the Sharjah Biennial in 2005, and the Venice Biennial in 2003.
Unfinished Business: Notes toward an Artist Statement
Carey Young’s artistic work often focuses on the growing influence of corporations and the legal sphere on individual and collective subjectivity, which she explores using a variety of media including video, photography, installation, and performance. In this article, which takes the form of an artist’s statement, she discusses various artistic works of hers in relation to their interrogations of contemporary neoliberalism.
False Economy. Paper given at 'Untitled (labour): contemporary art & immaterial production', conference at Tate Britain
This half-day symposium invited audience members to engage with international artists and academics to investigate current conditions of artistic production in relation to new forms of labour in the emerging global economy. Speakers included Claire Bishop, Tania Bruguera, Pascal Gielen, Stefano Harney, Stewart Martin, Hito Steyerl, and Carey Young. The event was chaired by T.J. Demos and Lauren Rotenberg.
'Speechcraft'. Paper given as part of 'Art Speech: A Symposium about Symposia', Museum of Modern Art, New York
Contracting Universe
'Contracting Universe' is a large-scale print applied to the gallery wall, which features NASA’s recent digital rendering of the surface of Mars. Closely resembling a Modernist photograph of a sublime mountainscape, when viewed at close range the image appears more and more like a digital approximation, suggesting a poetic futility inherent in the human desire to comprehend or manage the infinite.
Report of the Legal Subcommittee
Report of the Legal Subcommittee is a print featuring a map of the stars, together with a found transcription of a United Nations meeting in which various international delegations declare frustration with their 40-year-old, ongoing efforts to devise a legal definition of outer space. This admission seems to hold a rich poetic potential, the human attempts to bureaucratize and control outer space seemingly frustrated by the sublime scale and mystery of its infinite depths.
Missing Mass
'Missing Mass' is a sculptural work created with the scientific advice of Dr. Malcolm Fairbairn, an astrophysicist based at King’s College London. The piece ‘presents’ a specific number of dark matter particles, calculated to be present according to scientific logic, alongside a legal disclaimer which proposes the particles as the only truly free entities in existence, since they can pass through any material entity on the planet. The work centres on the idea of artistic freedom, suggesting that if dark matter particles are the only free entities in existence, by implication, art, the artist, and any other societal or cultural element held to be symbolic of freedom, are merely constrained, whether by gravity, bureaucracy, institutional ties, etc. The work also proposes links between minimal and conceptual sculpture (such as the early work of Hans Haacke) and contemporary developments in astrophysics. Like a number of my works, the piece uses a legal disclaimer, a written form familiar from contemporary communications, which symbolises the lack of responsibility taken by large organisations in the contemporary era. Solo exhibitions include Le Quartier, (Quimper, 2013), Migros Museum (Zurich, 2013), mima, Middlesbrough (2010), Paula Cooper Gallery (New York, 2010). Group exhibitions include Marianne Boesky Gallery (New York, 2012). Publications include Williams, Tom. “Carey Young” Art in America January 2011, pg. 110-111; illus.
Redshift series
A series of six ‘camera-less’ photographs made by exposing light through translucent meteorite fragments in the darkroom, as if they were photographic negatives. The resulting images are abstract yet offer us a window into a meteorite’s formation at the birth of the solar system some 4.75 billion years ago, long before the formation of the Earth. Whilst the image relates cosmic time to the indexical moment of exposure embedded in any photograph, the title includes a copyright statement outlining an comet-like scattering of the image into the public domain after the artist’s death. Created with a specialist IP lawyer, this represents an experimental new form in copyright law. The title of each work in the series is: ‘C-type print from the Redshift series (exposed from a slice of pallasite meteorite, formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago, at the birth of the Solar System. The artist hereby declares that with effect from 1st January 2110 copyright protection in this work shall be abandoned on a country by country basis. This global abandonment of copyright is to begin with the Prime Meridian and will proceed westerly across the globe at the rate of 1000 miles per year, as measured from the Equator).’ Solo exhibitions of this project include Le Quartier, (Quimper, 2013), Migros Museum (Zurich, 2013), Eastside Projects (Birmingham, 2010 and tour to Cornerhouse, Manchester and mima, Middlesbrough); Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, 2010. Group exhibitions include ‘Space. About a Dream’, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2011 (exh. cat); ‘Sophie Calle, Christian Marclay, Paul Pfeiffer, Walid Raad, Michael Sailstorfer, Carey Young’, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, 2011. Conferences and public lectures include Photoworks, Brighton, 2011. Publications include Carey Young, monograph, pub. Migros Museum/JRP Ringier (2013); Adler, Phoebe and Slyce, John, Contemporary Art in the UK, Black Dog Publishing, 2012.
By and Between (after Bernd and Hilla Becher)
By and Between (after Bernd and Hilla Becher) (2013) is a photo/text piece which incorporates an original, unique, iconic, borrowed work by Bernd and Hilla Becher: Gasbehälter Zeche Concordia, Oberhausen. D. 1969, consisting of two b/w photographs of an empty and full gas tank. With the consent of Hilla Becher, a duplicate was made by a specialist technician, and the resulting print was framed by the Bechers' usual framer in Düsseldorf. The original Becher work and its copy hang side by side, more or less indistinguishable, together with a wall text consisting of a found selection of ‘doublets’ - legal pairs of words such as ‘null and void’, 'do and perform', ‘final and conclusive’ - which are used by Anglophone lawyers to add emphasis and nuance through repetition, but are also possibly redundantly repetitious. At its simplest level the piece offers a guessing game as to which is original and copy, yet through the text, questions are posed about the value and role of appropriation in art. The piece refers to Sherrie Levine and also makes indirect reference to the notable but contested claims of copyright infringement around appropriation in art. Here, instead of being a mechanism to restrict creativity, law here is as a freeing device, a method to suggest multiple interpretations of an apparently simple act of appropriation and homage.
Disclaimer (Reality)
This vinyl text wall piece is intended to operate as a footnote to an exhibition. It consists of an appropriated text: part of a published statement by the currency speculator and stock investor George Soros. An asterisk has been added to the beginning of the text, in effect turning the text into a footnote, as if a dialogue is occurring within the gallery space.
Hey Hey Glossolalia: Exhibiting the Voice
A two-volume publication focussing on artists' use of the voice, with a section curated by Adam Pendleton and contributions by over 40 major contemporary artists, including Tauba Auerbach, Mark Beasley, Nicholas Bullen, Adam Chodzko, Cerith Wyn Evans, Chris Evans, Ryan Gander + Bedwyr Williams, Liam Gillick + Tirdad Zolgadhr, Will Holder, Mark Leckey, No Bra, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, William Pope L., Sun Ra, Rammellzee, Rigo 23, Frances Stark, Ian Svenonius, Javier Téllez, Mark Titchner, Vert, Robert King Wilkerson, Carey Young, and more. Designed by Mark Beasley and Dexter Sinister.
Terminal Velocity
The figure of 1,404,000 miles per hour represents the speed of the gallery in space relative to the Big Bang. This figure was calculated by Dr. Malcolm Fairbairn, an astrophysicist based at King’s College London. The spotlight is placed so that its beam highlights any physical imperfections on the gallery wall, and to create a theatrical ‘pool’ of light suggesting the staging of further action.
Memento Park
Memento Park was shot in a statue park in Budapest which contains a large collection of monumental, socialist realist Soviet statues in poses of ‘suspended animation’. We see the statues surrounded by suburban housing, open land, commercial signage, electricity pylons and a busy road with thundering industrial traffic. The bustling contemporary life passing by outside the park seems to undercut the statues' historical importance and impressive physical impact by giving them a provisional, peripheral, Robert Smithson-esque context. Nevertheless, the seductive lushness of the surrounding greenery, shot mainly at the beginning and end of the day, gives these icons of propaganda a strange and beautiful serenity, like we are witnessing the dusk and dawn of an idyll.
Obsidian Contract
Obsidian Contract features a legal contract written backwards and reflected in a black mirror. Dark or obsidian mirrors have a long tradition within witchcraft and the occul. Associated with attempts to see or ‘divine’ the future or to communicate with ‘spirit worlds’, they also became an artistic device used by landscape painters in the Romantic era. The text in this piece proposes the exhibition space visible in the black mirror as a new area of publicly-owned land, in which numerous activities which states have made illegal in public space, such as the grazing of animals, sexual activity or the distribution of propaganda, are made permissible. This piece is intended to question the privatisation and commodification of the commons by proposing a new area of the commons within the exhibition space. Although this space is virtual and unfixed (it extends according to the viewer’s angle of vision, and is potentially infinite, according to the exhibition space), the legal agreement the gallery signs up to is real and potentially ‘actionable’ in law. The piece exists as an liberatory and experimental legal instrument that uses law as an artistic medium. It suggests law as a separate kind of ‘reality’, one with its own inherent subjectivities and points of fissure. Solo exhibitions of this work include Migros Museum (Zurich 2013), Eastside Projects (Birmingham 2010 and tour to Cornerhouse, Manchester and mima, Middlesbrough), Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, 2010. Group exhibitions include ‘Mind the System, Find the Gap’, Z33, Hasselt, Belgium, 2012 (exh. cat); ‘Museum as Hub: The Accords’, The New Museum, New York, NY. 2011. ‘Ventajas de viajar en tren’, Parra & Romero, Madrid, 2011; Void if Removed, Le Plateau / Frac Île-de-France, Paris, France, 2011. The piece was reviewed in Art Monthly and included in Carey Young, monograph, pub. Migros Museum/JRP Ringier (2013).
Follow the Protest
The interactive telephone piece Follow the Protest uses a call centre interface to offer recordings of interviews and other sounds recorded by the artist at the G20 protests in London in April 2009. A key concern of the work is the desire for a pro-revolutionary Leftist stance within the artistic sphere, and the artistic avant garde, with its historical connection to ideas of revolution. The work offers a playful ‘protest on demand’; the piece contrasts the architecture and aural experience of today’s typical ‘commercial’ phone call with the sound, passion and ‘liveness’ of direct action protest. The recordings include various protest chants, speeches and interviews with a variety of protestors, including a TV journalist, a protest organiser and employees of an investment bank. The piece contrasts physical gallery space with a telephonic, hypertextual labyrinth to be explored and interacted with by the viewer, like a negative space or ‘non-site’ which reflects and inverts the exhibition site. Nevertheless, the work subtly alludes to the increasing commercialisation, if not corporatisation of the art world, and the bureaucratic functions inherent to any art institution. Solo exhibitions include Eastside Projects (Birmingham, 2010 and tour to Cornerhouse, Manchester and mima, Middlesbrough); Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, Saint Louis. Group exhibitions include “Commentary”, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY, 2009. Conferences and public lectures “Politics and Photography - Carey Young & Immo Klink,” Photoworks, Brighton, 2011 “Art Speech: A Symposium on Symposia,” MoMA, New York, NY, 2011, “Vidéo et après,” Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, 2010. Publications include Carey Young, monograph, pub. Migros Museum/JRP Ringier (2013); Bryan- Wilson, Julia. “Inside Job: Julia Bryan-Wilson on the art of Carey Young,” Artforum October 2010, pp. 240-247; Katz, Miriam. “Carey Young: 500 Words,” Artforum (online) May 5, 2009.
Support Structures
Essays by Bart De Baere, Céline Condorelli, Mark Cousins, Wouter Davidts, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Andrea Phillips, Jaime Stapleton, Jan Verwoert, Eyal Weizman & Rony Brauman With works by Michael Asher, Artist Placement Group, Can Altay, Conrad Atkinson, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan, Banu Cennetoglu, Christopher D’Arcangelo, Martin Beck, Cevdet Erek, Andrea Fraser, Buckminster Fuller, Ryan Gander, Ella Gibbs, Frederick Kiesler, Lucy Kimbell, James Langdon, El Lissitzky, Peter Nadin, “The offices of Peter Fend, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Jenny Holzer, Peter Nadin, Richard Prince & Robin Winters,” Gordon Matta-Clark, Antoni Muntadas, Lilly Reich, Support Structure, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Lawrence Weiner, Christopher Williams, Carey Young.
It's for You
Entering a museum, visitors are greeted by a large-scale black wall text: “friendly, honest, straightforward, refreshing, dynamic.” This corporate statement of brand values was appropriated from an international telecoms corporation and should be placed in or acrosss a large entrance area within a museum or gallery.
Revolution is a Lovely Word
Throughout its diverse manifestations, the utopian entails two related but contradictory elements: the aspiration to a better world, and the acknowledgment that its form may only ever live in our imaginations. Furthermore, we are as haunted by the failures of utopian enterprise as we are inspired by the desire to repair the failed and build the new. Contemporary art reflects this general ambivalence. The utopian impulse informs politically activist and relational art, practices that fuse elements of art, design, and architecture, and collaborative projects aspiring to progressive social or political change. Two other tendencies have emerged in recent art: a looking backward to investigate the utopian elements of previous eras, and the imaginative modeling of alternative worlds as intimations of possibility. This anthology contextualizes these utopian currents in relation to political thought, viewing the utopian as a key term in the artistic lineage of modernity. It illuminates how the exploration of utopian themes in art today contributes to our understanding of contemporary cultures, and the possibilities for shaping their futures. Artists surveyed include: Joseph Beuys, Paul Chan, Guy Debord, Jeremy Deller, Liam Gillick, Antony Gormley, Dan Graham, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Paul McCarthy, Constant A. Nieuwenheuys, Paul Noble, Nils Norman, Philippe Parreno, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Superflex, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Mark Titchner, Atelier van Lieshout, Jeff Wall, Andy Warhol, Wochenklauser, Carey Young Writers include: Theodor Adorno, Jennifer Allen, Catherine Bernard, Ernst Bloch, Yve-Alain Bois, Nicolas Bourriaud, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Alex Farquharson, Hal Foster, Michel Foucault, Alison Green, Fredric Jameson, Rosalind Krauss, Hari Kunzru, Donald Kuspit, Dermis P. Leon, Karl Marx, Jeremy Millar, Thomas More, William Morris, Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist, George Orwell, Jacques Rancière, Stephanie Rosenthal, Beatrix Ruf Documents of Contemporary Arts series Copublished with Whitechapel Gallery, London
Cautionary Statement
Cautionary Statement is a text piece based on 'forward looking statements', a type of corporate disclaimer published in American annual reports. Forward-looking statements allow companies to discuss the future whilst not being held to account if such statements do not come to pass. The language of Young's disclaimer seems to ask the viewer not to 'rely on' any future-oriented words used by the gallery, although it remains unclear to whom the collective term 'we' mentioned in the disclaimer actually refers to. In a gallery context the piece should be placed in a public area in which everyday work takes place, especially an area for spoken conversations.
'Perverse Institutions', paper given at 'Museum 21: Institution, Idea, Practice', international conference at Irish Museum of Modern Art.
Museum 21: Institution Idea Practice was an international symposium at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin, which investigated new perspectives on the role and function of public galleries and museums in the 21st century by exploring their key challenges, frictions and possibilities. Speakers: Bart De Baere, Okwui Enwezor, Andrea Fraser, Enrique Juncosa, Susan Pearce, Carey Young
Has Man a Function in Universe?
Of all the questions Has Man A Function In Universe? may be the key that binds and directs all of the other questions. Gavin Wade has commissioned artists and writers to respond to this question using a combination of text and image.
Uncertain Contract
In this video we see an actor dressed as a lawyer, standing in a vast white space. He interprets a script composed of legal terms from a commercial contract. The details of the contract have been omitted, leaving a list of words 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. 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. The piece, which inhabits the form of a contract, explores law as a conceptual space, with the actor’s moving body suggesting a typographic form against the abstract whiteness of the backdrop. Solo exhibitions of this work include Migros Museum (Zurich 2013), Paula Cooper Gallery (New York, 2010), The Power Plant (Toronto, 2009), Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, 2009), and Eastside Projects (Birmingham 2010 and tour to Cornerhouse, Manchester and mima, Middlesbrough.) Group exhibitions include World as Stage, nbk, Berlin, 2009 (exh. cat). The piece was featured three times in Artforum, reviewed in Art Monthly and Frieze (online); discussed in publications Carey Young, 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.
'Innovation Changes Everything'. Paper given at 'Against the Avant-garde? Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia', international conference, Tate Modern
Imagination Engineering. Paper given at Tate Modern symposium for 'Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia'
This symposium explored different ideas of avant-garde art in the early twentieth century, and in contemporary practice and was staged in relation to the major Tate Modern exhibition Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia. Speakers included Paul Wood, TJ Demos, Jason Gaiger, Jennifer Mundy, Dave Beech, Carey Young and Richard De Domenici.
Counter Offer
Counter Offer (2008) is a two-part text piece created with the advice of a legal team. The first part contains an offer (of ‘liberty’) and the second a counter offer (of ‘justice’). Through the wording of the contract, these utopian offers are surrounded by a legal loop in which both are cancelled out in ‘mid air’: through the act of reading, both offers become withdrawn, and the piece seems to suggests its own erasure. The work asks: how might law be used as an artistic medium? Can an artwork also be a functional legal contract? How might a moment of poetry be created within a contractual structure? The work was commissioned by Electra and Thomas Dane Gallery in 2008. Solo exhibitions featuring this work include Migros Museum (Zurich 2013), The Power Plant (Toronto, 2009), Eastside Projects (Birmingham 2010 and tour to Cornerhouse, Manchester and mima, Middlesbrough), Thomas Dane Gallery, 2008. Group exhibitions include Museum as Hub: The Accords, The New Museum, New York, NY. 2011, Permanent Mimesis, curated by Alessandro Rabottini, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin, Italy, 2010. Group show including Roman Ondák, Seth Price. It was reviewed in Frieze (online, 2009); featured in publications Migros Museum (Zurich 2013), Permanent Mimesis, exhibition catalogue, pub. Electa Mondadori/GAM, Turin, 2010, and Art and Text, Black Dog Publishing, London, UK, 2009; discussed in artist talks at venues including Photoworks, Brighton, Centre Pompidou and the Miami Art Museum and within leading conferences at Tate Modern, Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, University of Sussex and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
Hard Bargain. Part of 'The New Administration of Aesthetics', international conference, Oslo
Product Recall
In the video 'Product Recall', we see Carey Young invited into a psychoanalyst's consulting room. She is asked to match from memory a series of advertising slogans with their corresponding brand. The slogans belong to global companies (many of which are active as art sponsors) that brand themselves around “imagination” or “inspiration.” It remains unclear whether the point of the exercise is for the artist to remember the slogans, or to forget them.
Body Techniques
'Body Techniques' (2007) is a series of eight photographs that considers the interrelationships between art and globalized commerce. The title of the series refers to a phrase originally coined by Marcel Mauss and developed by Pierre Bourdieu as habitus, which describes how an operational context or behavior can be affected by institutions or ideologies. Set in the vast building sites of Dubai and Sharjah’s futuristic corporate landscape, we see Carey Young alone and dressed in a suit, her actions reworking some of the classic performance-based works associated with Conceptual art, including pieces by Richard Long, Bruce Nauman, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Dennis Oppenheim and Valie Export. In thus recasting earlier works centered around the physicality of the body in time and space, it is ambiguous whether the artist is molding herself to the landscape or exploring ways of resisting it. The locations for Young's photographs are a series of empty, uninhabited 'new build' developments reminiscent of Las Vegas, rising from the desert's tabula rasa aimed at bombastic luxury and spectacle and intended for thousands of incoming Western corporate executives. The architectural style is consummate ‘global village’ - a business theme park composed of swathes of multinational HQs and Italianate McVillas. These non-places could eventually compose an entire world-view: a hyperreal, corporate vision of utopia. Half-constructed backdrops are used as a 'stage' for the action, with the artist appearing as one tiny individual, overwhelmed, dislocated from, or even belittled by the corporate surroundings, while dressed up to play a role within it.
Inventory
The artist was weighed on the date on which this art work was first commissioned. If the artwork is re-commissioned, the artist weighs herself on the date she agrees to participate in the exhibition/project. Calculations are then made as to the mass and current market value of each chemical element present in the artist's body at the time of weighing. The work consists of the total market value of these chemical elements (expressed as a graphic on the wall), plus framed prints of the calculation data. Since the physique of the artist and the market value of her constituent chemical elements may fluctuate over time, future versions of this work may display a different value. Originally commissioned by Christina Guerra Contemporary Art, Lisbon (2007). Subsequently recommissioned by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, 2007; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, 2008; Paula Cooper Gallery, Basel Art Fair, 2008; The Power Plant, Toronto, 2009; Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, 2010; Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2010, and tour to Cornerhouse, Manchester, 2011, mima, Middlesbrough, 2011); Galeria Nuno Centeno, Porto, 2012, Le Quartier, Quimper (2013). Thanks to Dr. John Emsley (University of Cambridge) and Dr. Ilya Eigenbrot (Imperial College London) for scientific advice and calculations.
Declared Void
'Declared Void' conflates a legal contract with ideas of the performative and with minimalism in art. Through a contractual text on the wall of the gallery, the work invites members of the public to enter into a corner zone of the gallery (delineated by lines) and thereby remove themselves from the jurisdiction and protection of the US constitution. A legal fiction, the work asks where legal territories apply and where laws and human rights are enforceable. The piece has been widely exhibited, including at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, as part of the Performa05 Biennial of Visual Art Performance, Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich, CA2M, Madrid and the RISD Museum of Art, which also acquired the work.
Speechcraft
Speechcraft features a meeting of the international public speaking club Toastmasters, presented as a participatory performance that the artist has adapted by inserting her own subject matter. It was staged at the Hayward Gallery, London on June 23rd 2012, as well as prior stagings by The Power Plant, Toronto (2009), Creative Time, New York (2008) and Modern Art Oxford (2007).
Lines Made by Walking
This is a projected slide piece consisting of a series of photographic transparencies shot at a fixed viewpoint, as documentation of a performance by the artist. The viewer sees Carey Young, dressed in a suit, walking backwards and forwards in a crowd of commuters. The figure of the artist appears and disappears amongst the others surrounding her, who appear similar to her. This action is repeated this until we realize that her repeated walking appears, in fact, to be ‘inscribing’ a line in the crowd. The artist appears to be restaging works by the Situationists as much as Richard Long, particularly his ‘A Line Made by Walking’ much as her activity can also be read as that of a the clockwork toy or caged animal pacing in captivity. She appears as if displaced, or within a different temporal continuum: the artist appears to be repeating the workers’ daily journey but at a faster speed. Her struggles to create a space within the crowd could be seen as a deadpan parallel for artistic‘struggle’. The artwork appears balanced between two states, as confined as the daily monotony of the commuters’ journey and as some kind of free act hidden within monotony, but equally within its own modes of institutionalization. As a projected slide piece, the rhythm of the slides changing automatically within the projector (at a 2 second interval) adds a sense of inevitability and a machinic rhythm to the work, plus a cyclical form to the piece.
Perverse Institutions. Camera at Work symposium, Tate Modern.
Carey Young, Incorporated
The first monograph devoted to the work of Carey Young.
I am a Revolutionary
In 'I am a Revolutionary' we see the artist undergoing a presentation skills training session with her own personal trainer. Within the stage-like environment of an empty office space, its glass wall offering a cinematic view onto an atrium of architecturally epic proportions, we can see other office workers immersed in their business day in identikit cell-spaces. Young and her teacher work hard at perfecting one line from what appears to be a larger speech intended for an unknown audience. Young is having great trouble with the line - "I am a revolutionary" - words which could equally come from heroic 'business leadership' rhetoric as from the words of political or anti-globalisation agitators, equally as it seems also to refer to the legacy of the avant-garde. Repeating the words again and again in a series of fruitless attempts to sound credible, Young tries to internalise the message so that it becomes something she personally believes. To her trainer, the words seem unproblematic, as if they are just another message that can be spouted to an audience like any other within the realm of popular or political culture. Referring to the iconography of Joseph Beuys, especially his lecture-based works, I am a Revolutionary presents Young and her trainer in a somewhat pathetic quest for a 'radical' position. The work refers to the ways in which modes of dissent have become increasingly commodified, with Che Guevara's face, for example, a familiar icon on tshirts or advertising hoardings and 'revolution' a familiar boardroom mantra in these days of increasing business competition. It seems there is no 'outside' left, no clear position for critical distance that is not soon incorporated back into the flow of capital around the globe. I am a Revolutionary points to this in a cyclical sense: the artist and her helper appear suspended in a continuum of repetition, effort and belief that change may be possible.
Everything You've Heard is Wrong
This piece is a video of a performance by the artist held at Speakers' Corner, London in the midst of the traditional Sunday mayhem of speakers and onlookers. Dressed in a smart business suit, the artist gives a skills workshop on successful corporate-style communication. The video records her impassioned performance as well as the reactions of the temporary crowd of onlookers. Speaker's Corner has a long history in the public imagination, whether as a popular site for political demonstrations or as a symbol for unregulated free speech. It is a location renowned for entertainment, madness, and outrage, but particularly for extremes of religious or political belief. Today it appears somewhat an anachronism, with the almost biblical feeling of a souk. Passion, anger and laughter run high among this temporary community. Emotion and conviction are on the surface in a rather unfashionable way: this is not the apathy or irony of the times. Yet despite this sense of a backwards connection with history, the site is a model for the sort of free speech supposedly so central to the 'information age'. Communication flows freely here, without the mediation of machines.
Atomic
Catalogue for the touring exhibition 'Atomic' featuring specially commissioned works by James Acord, Mark Aerial Waller and Carey Young, on the subject of the cultural legacy of the nuclear industry.
Conditions Apply. Paper given at 'Performing the Law', international symposium organised by the Law School, Birkbeck and the Universities of Paris 8 and Paris 10
London-based artist Carey Young has, for a number of years, used law as one of her artistic media. She exhibits internationally, including solo shows at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2013) and The Power Plant, Toronto (2009), and group shows at MoMA/PS1 (New York), the New Museum (New York), Tate Britain, Hayward Gallery and San Francisco MoMA as well as various biennials. She is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. A monograph on her work, Subject to Contract, was published by JRP|Ringier in 2013. She teaches at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, and is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Law School at Birkbeck, University of London.
Still Life
In this performance an actor, dressed as a lawyer, reads out a will in front of audience members who are referred to as both ‘witnesses’ and potential ‘beneficiaries’ to the will. The will proposes experimental relations between people and objects and takes a playful approach to the relationship between art and memory, and between the physical and immaterial. A ‘will reading’ is familiar as a pivotal dramatic event within literature, cinema and TV soap operas. Nevertheless, such events are unnecessary in legal terms and reside purely in the realm of the fictional. Wills could be seen as a form of legal choreography, structuring relationships between the dead and the living, and between people and objects, and acting as an utterance of love, kinship, spite, remembrance, rage, generosity or, perhaps, madness. Wills are a form of gift-giving, an instruction, a legacy, a form of succession, disclosure and confession. Still Life was first presented as part of These Immovable Walls: Performing Power at Dublin Castle, July 2014 curated by Michelle Browne.
Speechcraft
Speechcraft features a meeting of the international public speaking club Toastmasters. Widely used by businesspeople as well as trainee lawyers and politicians, Toastmasters trains people from all walks of life to construct their public presence so that they look and sound like ‘leaders’. Speechcraft is a performance work which takes a Toastmaster training session as a readymade performative situation. The artist inserts specific subject matter for speakers to respond to by giving an impromptu speech. The subject matter given to the speakers were all objects from Carey Young's studio which she personally finds inspiring. As with every Toastmaster meeting, all the resulting speeches were judged and evaluated by other Toastmaster members, as well as the audience, in a cycle of inspiration, review, and reward. Each time the piece is staged it alters due to the unique contributions of the speakers taking part, the audience's reactions and involvement, and the inspirational objects from the artist's studio, a collection which grows and changes as she develops new artistic works. Carey Young has written: “Speechcraft is in many senses an opportunity for the invited public to think about the relationship between art, artists and the public by presenting Toastmasters as a kind of alternative space of creativity, interpretation, ritual and critique.”
Beck's Futures
A one hour BBC4 TV programmed devoted to the work of artists included in the Beck's Futures exhibition at the ICA, London in 2003, including a section on the work of Carey Young.
Front Row
In connection with the Beck's Futures exhibition at the ICA, London, Carey Young was interviewed about her artistic work as part of the Front Row arts radio show on Radio 4.
The Contract, the Artist and the Museum
Law, Poetics and Legal Fictions. 'Law and Poetics' conference, Cambridge University
A lecture to Cambridge University 'Law and Poetics' international conference, organised by CRASSH and funded by the ERC