Carey Young (born 1970) is a visual artist whose work uses a variety of media including video, photography, text and installation. Her work often examines and questions the reach of the legal and commercial spheres and their ability to shape contemporary reality. Since 2017, she has created two films featuring female judges in order to examine the interrelationships of law, fiction and gender. Young teaches at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

in London where she is a Professor in Fine Art.

Early life and education

Born in

Lusaka Lusaka ( ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Zambia. It is one of the fastest-developing cities in southern Africa. Lusaka is in the southern part of the central plateau at an elevation of about . , the city's population was abo ...

in Zambia in 1970, Young grew up in Manchester, England and studied at

Manchester Polytechnic Manchester Metropolitan University is located in the centre of Manchester, England. The university has 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff. It is home to four faculties (Arts and Humanities, Business and Law, Health and Education ...

, the

University of Brighton The University of Brighton is a public university based in Brighton on the south coast of England. Its roots can be traced back to 1858 when the Brighton School of Art was opened in the Royal Pavilion. It achieved university status in 1992. T ...

; she then gained a Masters in Photography at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...

in London. She has dual US/UK citizenship and lives and works in London, UK.

Exhibitions and themes

Exhibitions of Young's work include solo exhibitions at

Modern Art Oxford Modern Art Oxford is an art gallery established in 1965 in Oxford, England. From 1965 to 2002, it was called The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. The gallery presents exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. It has a national and international ...

Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the A ...

, Migros Museum of Contemporary Art,

The Power Plant The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery is a Canadian public art gallery located at Harbourfront Centre in the heart of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Gallery is a registered Canadian charitable organization. Initially established in 1976 as ...

, the

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis is an art museum for contemporary art, located in St. Louis, Missouri. Known informally as the CAM St. Louis, the museum is located at 3750 Washington Boulevard in the Grand Center Arts District. The build ...

, and inclusion in group exhibitions at

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in En ...

, the

Whitechapel Art Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fir ...

, the

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Royal ...

Secession Secession is the formal withdrawal of a group from a Polity, political entity. The process begins once a group proclaims an act of secession (such as a declaration of independence). A secession attempt might be violent or peaceful, but the goal i ...

, Kunstverein München,

Mass MOCA The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building complex located in North Adams, Massachusetts. It is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing ...

MoMA PS1 MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution at 2201 Jackson Avenue in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens in New York City, United States. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, th ...

, Jeu de Paume and the Venice, Moscow, Taipei, Tirana and Busan Biennials. Young's work is included in the public collections of the

Arts Council England Arts Council England is an arm's length non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is also a registered charity. It was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council o ...

, and

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

. 'Disclaimer', a 2003 exhibition at the

Henry Moore Institute The Henry Moore Foundation is a registered charity in England, established for education and promotion of the fine arts — in particular, to advance understanding of the works of Henry Moore, and to promote the public appreciation of sculpt ...

examined legal disclaimers as a form of

negative space In art and design, negative space or negative volume is the empty space around and between the subject(s) of an image. In graphic design this is known as white space. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, not th ...

. In 2005, she showed 'Consideration', a series of works exploring the connections between contract law and performance art at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York as part of the PERFORMA05 Biennial. Noted performance art curator RoseLee Goldberg described the works in this show as "dealing with the overwhelming power of the law." Her 2013 exhibition "Legal Fictions" at Migros Museum in Zurich was described by Mousse Magazine as featuring:

"Law-based works
hat A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...
address the monolithic power of the legal system. The artist examines law as a conceptual and abstract space in which power, rights, and authority are played out through varying forms of performance and language. With the drafting assistance of legal advisers, her works often take the form of experimental but functional legal instruments such as contracts, and also employ media such as video, installation, and text".

Her 2017 video installation ''Palais de Justice'', at

Paula Cooper Gallery The Paula Cooper Gallery is an art gallery in New York City, founded in 1968 by . History Predecessors Cooper ran her own space, the Paula Johnson Gallery, from 1964 to 1966, where Walter De Maria launched his first solo show in New York. She w ...

was described by critic Jeffrey Kastner as: “quietly stunning … vividly proposes a juridical world as it might otherwise be, a form of the Law that may someday be possible.” Johanna Fateman, writing for Artforum, described the work as: "a transfixing (...) speculative fiction", a "tantalising (...) novel mockup of a post-patriarchal legal system." Laura Cumming, of ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. In 1993 it was acquired by Guardian Media Group Limited, and operated as a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' ...

'', said "Young’s profound and involving examination of the law has continued through film, photography and installation art for more than 20 years. (...) The laws that govern our rights, our agency and even our movements in this world are, for Young, 'a form of choreography'." Critic and curator Toby Kamps said Young's "Text works take legal premises to their logical extremes to show the malleability and potential in legal codes. Her photographs and videos pull telling details and new social formations from the flux of life. Her genius is her ability to deftly rearrange the ideas and the stuff of everyday life to envision new realities and possibilities—openings in the (man-made) systems that so often box us in."

Selected solo exhibitions

* 2024 ''Appearance,'' Paula Cooper Gallery, New York * 2023 ''Appearance,'' Modern Art Oxford * 2020 ''The Vision Machine,'' Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark * 2017 ''The New Architecture,'' Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas * 2013 ''Legal Fictions,'' Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich * 2009 ''Speech Acts,'' Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

Other publications

Young's work has been included in numerous publications and a number of videos and audio recordings.

Selected periodicals

* Cumming, Laura, 'Carey Young: Appearance review – the faces of female justice'
The Observer
26 March 2023 * Fateman, Johanna, "Carey Young at Paula Cooper"
Artforum
Nov 2017 * Farago, Jason, 'Palais de Justice'

20 Sept 2017 * Bryan-Wilson, Julia. 'Inside Job: Julia Bryan-Wilson on the art of Carey Young,' Artforum, Oct 2010 * Bell, Natalie, 'Carey Young', Art Papers, March/April 2008 * Schwabsky, Barry, "Carey Young", Artforum, Sept 2005 * Smith, Roberta, "The Passions of the Good Citizen", The New York Times, 3 May 2002

Web articles

* Kastner, Jeffrey, Garage magazine (Vice magazine), Oct 2017 * Bourbon, Matthew, 'Critic's Pick: Carey Young at Dallas Museum of Art', Artforum.com, Feb 2017 * Shore, Robert, and Young, Carey, 'Interview with Carey Young: “Friendly, Honest, Straightforward”: Meditations on Power', Elephant magazine, Feb 2017 * Goldberg, RoseLee and Stallman, Nick, "Conversations..with RoseLee Goldberg', New York Foundation for the Arts, 2005 * Baker, R.C., 'The Road to Dystopia', Village Voice, 2007

Books

* Buskirk, Martha; Gygax, Raphael; Young, Carey and Zolghadr, Tirdad, in 'Carey Young: Subject to Contract', JRP Ringier and Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich, London, 2013 * Farquharson, Alex; Gillick, Liam and Young, Carey; Kelsey, John and Millar, Jeremy, in 'Carey Young, Incorporated', John Hansard Gallery and Film & Video Umbrella, London, 2002 * Nochlin, Linda, in Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum, New York, 2007 * Bourriaud, Nicolas, in Moscow Biennale 7 catalogue, Moscow, 2007 * Hoffman, Jens in 'Institutional Critique and After', edited by John C. Welchman, JRP/Ringier, Zürich, 2006 * Newman, Michael, in 'How to Improve the World', Hayward Gallery, London, 2006 * Townsend, Chris, 'New Art from London', Thames and Hudson, London, 2006 * Farquharson, Alex, Schlieker, Andrea, and Mahony, Emma in 'British Art Show 6', Hayward Gallery Publishing, London, 2005 * Latour, Bruno and Weibel, Peter, 'Making Things Public', ZKM and the MIT Press, Karlsruhe & Cambridge, 2005 * Hoffmann, Jens and Jonas, Joan, 'Art Works: Perform', Thames and Hudson, London, 2005 * Kimbell, Lucy (ed), 'New Media Art: Practice and Content in the UK 1994–2004', Arts Council of England / Cornerhouse publications, London, 2004

Videos about the artist

Artist's website
(video interview with the artist about her law-based works, Jan 2024; duration 4 mins 20 secs)
Centre Pompidou
(Artist talk in English, with French translation,17 May 2010; duration 1hr 51 mins)
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
(introductory video by curator, 2010; duration 6 mins 45 secs)

References

External links

Artist's web site

Artfacts.net artist ranking

Centre Pompidou artist talk, in English and French

Tate video recording of talk featuring the artist

Selected works plus bibliographical and biographical info on Paula Cooper Gallery website

Carey Young's profile as Professor of Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, London
{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, Carey 1970 births Alumni of Manchester Metropolitan University Alumni of the University of Brighton Alumni of the Royal College of Art Artists from Manchester British women artists British video artists British performance artists American video artists American women video artists Living people People from Lusaka American installation artists British installation artists Institutional Critique artists British contemporary artists 21st-century American women