Floating between Couches and Motels exhibition

The Herbert Smith Freehills Law Library is currently showcasing an intriguing artwork by criminologist and artist Dr Carolyn McKay. Floating Between Couches & Motels responds to Dr McKay's criminal law research into crimes in motel rooms as featured in her authored piece Who’s been sleeping in my bed? Cheap motel rooms and transgression. 

The art installation, on display at the University’s Herbert Smith Freehills Law Library, builds on Dr McKay’s 2022  Crime Scene Motel Project that explores the unique, but often overlooked, characteristics of motels that invite and enable transgression. 

The idea for this work developed when Dr McKay while teaching criminal law at the Sydney Law School. "I have attempted to theorise the motel room as a site chosen for criminal transgression, asking: What is it about these private-but-shared spaces that enables, perhaps beckons, criminal behaviour? And what tangible and intangible traces remain?"

Each neon sign in this artwork presents a fractured narrative or snippet of forensic evidence taken from criminal case law regarding motels. The narratives derived from Dr McKay’s extensive online research of criminal case law of hundreds of cases from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US regarding motel crime. 

Dr McKay explains: “These selected phrases seemed to be particularly evocative and almost poetic; together they are suggestive of a unique crime scene. Motels are supposed to be places of restful stay or holiday, but these phrases subvert that concept.” 

Dr McKay’s Crime Scene Motel Project received the 2023 ‘Non-Traditional Research Output Award’ from the Australian Legal Research Awards, a prestigious national scheme funded by the Council of Australian Law Deans. 

Floating Between Couches & Motels is on display in The Herbert Smith Freehills Law Library.