Crime Scene Motel Project

Motel rooms are characterised by impermanence and anonymity: liminal spaces of temporary occupation for a population of strangers that moves in one day and checks-out the next. Motels are often not destinations in themselves but, rather, fleeting accommodation for travellers on the road, moving between places. The intimate connection with mobility and vehicles is implicit in the name: with the rise of the car, the early twentieth-century 'motor hotel' became the mo-tel.

Motel rooms can be understood as vessels containing the traces of accumulated human experience and, sometimes, transgression. McKay's criminal law research of motel rooms uncovers them as occasional sites for clandestine mobile drug labs, sexual violence and hideouts for fugitives from the law. Offenders/guests might come and go, but affected motel rooms hold the ghosts of criminal activities.

McKay's 'Crime Scene Motel Project' exhibition 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.