Carey Young

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. In the slide projection sequence Lines Made by Walking (2003), Young, dressed in a suit, walks backwards and forwards in the midst of a one-way crowd of commuters. Here Young restages Richard Long's seminal piece, ‘A Line Made by Walking’, transposing his act of 'drawing' a line into the ground by repeatedly walking through a physical landscape, into to the context of the contemporary globalised city in which her artistic act of 'drawing a line' seems to mirror the daily journey of the city's workers to and from the office. The artist's determination to move the crowd out of the way becomes a deadpan parallel for heroic artistic 'struggle', whilst the artwork is nevertheless immanent in the crowd as if everyone pictured might be engaged in their own form of social sculpure. 'Optimum Performance' (2003) is a previously unexhibited video documentation of a recent performance piece created by the artist for the Whitechapel Gallery in London. 'Optimum Performance' features an actor who delivers a rousing motivational speech to the gallery audience as if they are group of his own professional colleagues. The piece can be read simultaneously as a functional tool designed to manipulate the abilities of the audience, and as a subtle critique of the institutions and systems of the art world. Carey Young (born 1970, UK/US citizen) graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1997. She has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows at venues including the Whitechapel Gallery (London), the ICA, (London), and the Munich Kunstverein, and is currently a resident artist at IASPIS in Stockholm. The first book on her work, 'Carey Young, Incorporated' was published by Film & Video Umbrella in 2002. Pressetext

Carey Young