Anyone who has found themselves watching Tom Cruise, Al Pacino, or more recently, Mark Rylance in “The Trial of the Chicago 7” pace a courtroom floor. The courtroom is a kind of theater and a stage where lawyers, judges, juries and witnesses all play their parts. Artist Courtney McClellan makes that idea of the courtroom as a performance space the focus of her layered Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia solo exhibition “Simulations.”
McClellan’s exhibition is about how law students are educated in special mock courtrooms, in a sense “playing” the lawyers they will become. As McClellan notes in her artist statement, though, students can inhabit a number of roles in these mock courtrooms: “During trial simulation, students may play the role of lawyer, witness, or judge in the courtroom.”
McClellan focuses on law schools in the South: Duke University, University of Alabama, University of Georgia and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill among others.
The artist’s photographs focus on these empty courtrooms decorated with lots of decorative plaster cornices and Greek key embellishments, American flags, state seals and the stoic faces of administrators gazing down from gilt-framed portraits.
The courtrooms can feel frozen in time, an idea amplified by the retro wall clocks, wood paneling and institutional carpeting, and other dated details. “University of Georgia Law School (Chairs)” uses some snarky cropping to humorous effect, though for the most part, McClellan’s images are straightforward and documentarian. The image of red velvet chairs, perhaps for the jury, is flanked by a portrait of a college administrator or president behind them, chopped off at the chest, denying observers a view of his face. “His” being the operative term here: if the portraits on the walls are any indication, despite the occasional female face, these law departments appear to still be bastions of male power.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
McClellan presents her photos of these mock courtrooms in plain white frames against crisp white gallery walls that have been ornamented with the kind of formal wainscoting you might find in one of those courtrooms. The images themselves hone in on specific design and architectural features of the courtrooms: the uncomfortable looking chairs where spectators sit and then the plush, high-backed pleather chairs occupied by judges.
A sense of drama is conveyed in key details, from the amphitheater-like arrangement of spectators in some courtrooms to the sort of stage that the judges’ bench represents. She offers close-ups of courtroom details in round cameo frames, of the microphones, lecterns and security cameras that also serve as silent “witnesses” to the proceedings. As much as the photographs are about performance, they are also about how the courtroom amplifies power structures that exist in the larger world. Courtrooms or Congress or the police force are their own stage sets where the weak and the strong interact; and tradition, architecture and habit reinforce those structures.
McClellan is attuned to how subtle architectural details offer clues about the demeanor required of mock courtroom participants. Just as an opera house or luxury clothing boutique conveys the importance or price point of the setting, the courtroom even in these “pretend” spaces, feels solemn, imbued with history and markers of social class and power from the gold-framed portraits to the tall wooden bench where judges sit.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
At face value, the project is a relatively straightforward project. Yet, the more someone looks at the artwork, the more onlookers will see the layers of McClellan’s fascinating subject that represent power, performance and architecture in a courtroom.
EXHIBIT REVIEW
“Courtney McClellan: Simulations”
Through March 27. Thurs.-Sat. noon-4 p.m. by appointment with reserved ticket. $5 non-members; free for members, children 6 and under, military and veterans. Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, 75 Bennett Street, Suite M1, Atlanta. 404-367-8700, mocaga.org.
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