Placing the viewer in the dock

Perhaps it was the ‘male gaze’ that led Andy Warhol to say: ‘In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.’ In an era where our named image is irretrievably out there, perhaps it is more interesting, desirable even, to be harder to identify. That’s a feature of artist Carey Young’s video work ‘Appearance’, in which a wordless, filmic portrait presents 15 UK women judges ‘diverse in their seniority, age and ethnicity - in their judicial robes looking straight at the camera’.

While we know they include the Supreme Court’s Dame Vivien Rose, Obiter is aware that individual identifications are beside the point.

Instead: ‘With almost forensic close-ups of hair, shoes, jewellery and regalia, the camera plays off the judges’ roles as powerful, self-possessed public intellectuals against their varied physical presence and the quirks of individual personalities.’ And of course, Appearance ‘places the viewer in the dock and centres on ideas of judgement between viewer and judge, on judging as performance, and on the power relations between judge and camera’.

The exhibition, which includes law and justice-linked text and photos, is at Modern Art Oxford’s art space from 25 March to 2 July.