By treating the law as an artistic medium, the artist invites the viewer to experience the otherwise abstract space of the contract.

In the new video Uncertain Contract, we see an actor interpret a script composed of legal terms from a commercial contract, the white backdrop of his rehearsal space referencing the 'white cube' of the gallery as well as the appearance of contractual documents. The specific terms of the contract have been omitted, leading to an 'uncertain' contract in which the meaning is open to interpretation.

Plato Contract is offered for sale on condition that it will only become a work of art if installed on Plato, a crater on the Moon. With subtle Romantic leanings, the contract guides the collector to consider their dreams of the Moon as part of the work, whilst making subtle reference to the legacy of Platonic ideas of reality and illusion.

In Mutual Release, a deadpan text work which plays on the legacy of Institutional Critique, the artist and the gallery enter into a contract which liberates each party from any connection to each other whilst also suggesting the double entendre of an erotic component to the exhibition-staging process.

Disclaimer (Risk) continues Young's ongoing interest in creating legal disclaimers as artworks in order to 'waive' aspects of aesthetic experience. Counter Offer is a two-part work containing an offer and a counter offer, each with a utopian theme. These offers create a legal loop in which both cancel each other out in 'mid air': through the act of reading, the piece both erases and 'withdraws' itself.

With Donorcard, visitors are offered an artwork for free. Although it has already been signed by the artist, it only acquires the status of a work of art 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 legally bound to life and death.

Unilateral Contract is a site-specific vinyl text piece on the gallery's window. Claiming the view from the gallery as part of the work, and referencing the annexation of public space by private commercial interest, this piece acts as a one-sided offer open to anyone: an advertisement for an aesthetic experience.

Collectively, the works suggest different levels of space and 'site', ranging from interpersonal relationships, to the gallery and its relations with collectors or its physical surroundings, to the networks of the international art market, the parameters of intellectual property law as well as the more cosmic territory of outer space.

With legally-trained executives increasingly running movie studios, news agencies and universities, the exhibition addresses the legal 'lock down' of contemporary cultural life. 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.

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To create all of the works Carey Young worked with a legal team comprising Robert Lands of Finers Stephens Innocent LLP, and Dr. Jaime Stapleton of Birkbeck College.

For the full press release, see here.