Unsettling Boundaries: Contemporary Art and the Law

Presents a new theory of the experience of the relationship between art and the law to uncover ways art incites us to question the law’s exclusions and rework its boundaries

A series of case studies exploring art that invites a reimagination of the way the law regulates everyday life An interdisciplinary study of the political implications of the entanglements of art and law A provocative analysis of the relationships between art and law that challenge representationalist assumptions underpinning both cultural spheres

Art that appropriates everyday life interrogates boundaries created by the law. Artists have made legal relationships such as contracts and property the subject of their art, have used them as a medium, and have relied on the law to assert their individual legal and moral rights. However, in this book Pilcher proposes that art puts into question the law’s exclusions whilst also inviting us to examine questions of accountability and responsibility for reconfiguring the way legal borders are used to regulate the world.

Examining a range of artworks including 'State Britain' by Mark Wallinger, 'Saydnaya (the missing 19db)', 'After SFX', and 'Walled Unwalled' by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, 'The Underlying' by Ami Clarke, Forensic Architecture’s 'The Killing of Mark Duggan', and 'Voteauction' by UBERMORGEN.COM, Pilcher explores how art has the scope to expose the constraints and contingencies of the regulation of the world by the law.