Law

Art and Law

At Sussex Law School we are engaged with a number of teaching and research projects that seek to bring together the disciplines and practices of art and law.

Across the Law School, we are running an Art/Law Teaching Theme 2018-19 where lecturers will be encouraged to experiment with more creative, visual,
performance-based methods of legal teaching.

Students have the practical opportunity in thinking through law in creative terms by painting, sculpting, performing and writing as part of the Art/Law Teaching theme, and more specifically in the third year optional Law and Art module.

Sussex Law School has a dedicated Art and Law Research Group that hosts seminars, exhibitions, talks from artists, gallery visits and PhD workshops, on the bringing together of art and law. Areas include copyright, ownership, real property, theoretical questions around aesthetics, beauty, property, socially engaged art, art therapy and the role of art in the justice system.

We have developed an international ‘Art/Law Network’: www.artlawnetwork.org
This is in collaboration with the Art and Law Research Group, where artists, activists, lawyers, practitioners can share their work and ideas, create art projects on law; law projects on art; collaborate on methodological approaches to law, through art; art, through law - and anything else in between.

Further information:
www.sussex.ac.uk/law/research/groups/art-law or email L.Finchett-Maddock.ac.uk

Find out more about our internal events below:

The Art/Law Teaching theme events: 

8 March 2019 - Using Art in Law

Using Art in Law:‘Cutting up the Law’ - Law Employability Week

Lucy Finchett-Maddock and Verona Ní Drisceoil (Sussex Law School)
Friday 8 March 2-3pm Ashdown House 102

Verona and Lucy will run a session on cutting up the law, which is literally as it says on the tin! The ‘cut-up’ technique, originally used by artist Brion Gysin and writer William Burroughs, as well as David Bowie, is where text is reordered to create new meanings.  The session will use this method to cut up legal texts in order to change their meaning, and perhaps even change the law (or at least show the law can be changed).  Burroughs claimed ‘cutting up is for everyone ..  right here, write now’ - and that includes budding lawyers!  

8 March - 30 May 2019 - Just Us Exhibition by Arthur McTaggart

Just Us Exhibition by artist Arthur McTaggart

Friday 8 March – 30 May

Freeman Building Foyer in collaboration with local charity Outside/In

The artist chosen by Law, Politics and Sociology, is Arthur McTaggart, a figurative painter from Cornwall with experience of the justice system as an ex-prisoner.  His work depicts darkness and light, and his ethos is very much concerned with promoting the therapeutic use of art.

The exhibition in the Freeman Foyer seeks to showcase the work of Arthur through as an artist represented Outside/In, a local platform for 'artists facing barriers' to promote and sell their work. The artists may come from a range of backgrounds, from those with learning difficulties to prisoners, to people with addiction and mental health issues, to artists who purely have to had formal training and see themselves as 'outsiders' to the art world.

Friday 15 March 2019 - Drawing / Painting to Music

Drawing/Painting to Music

Tomruk Ȕstȕnkaya (Sussex Law School)

Friday 15 March 1-2pm Freeman G16

The aim of the workshop is to explore the theme of student engagement. This is to be achieved by listening to a different range of music and to allow creativity to be led by the music. The workshop will also provide the opportunity for participants to produce a body of work each and engage in an innovative form of art/law pedagogy run by Tomruk.

Wednesday 27 March 2019 - Mapping Land Law 

Mapping Land Law

Helena Howe and Bonnie Holligan (Sussex Law School)

Wednesday 27 March 1-2pm Freeman F22

Helena and Bonnie will be sharing their cartographic legal pedagogy through the use of mapping in land law teaching, as well as their use of land law maps in their optional module ‘Land, Property and Environment’.  

Wednesday 10 April 2019 - Drawing as Legal Method 

Drawing as Legal Method

Philippa Lyon (Fine Art, University of Brighton)

Wednesday 10 April 1-2pm Freeman G16

Philippa is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Brighton, and is also the lead of the Drawing Research and Enterprise Group. She will be sharing her research on drawing as practice, her experience of bringing medical students and art students together to experience drawing processes in an optional drawing course on the human body, including through life drawing, anatomical specimen drawing and various non-observational drawing techniques. She also will share her work on drawing as a research process, and how we can envisage the use of drawing as practice and process in law.

Friday 3 May 2019 - Spraypainting Law

Spraypainting LAW with SinnaOne– SinnaOne (Artist and Mural Maker)

Friday 3 May 12-5pm Freeman Moot Room – Eventbrite to follow

Back by popular demand after his brilliant work with law students on the StreetLaw project and other initiatives, local street artist and mural maker Sinna One will be coming along to teach staff and students to spraypaint!  We will aim to create a mural outside as a collaborative and fun art/law end of term event.  Sign up to follow!