Paul Scott
Cumbria, England
Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Souvenir of Portland
The back of ‘Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Souvenir of Portland'
Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Sampler Jug No: 4
detail, 'Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Sampler Jug No:4'
The base, 'Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Sampler Jug No: 4'
Scott's Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Houston No: 3
Scott's Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Souvenir of Selma, AL
Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery
Scott's Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Across the Borderline (Trumpian Campaigne) No:2
Cumbrian Blue(s) New American Scenery, Souvenir of Providence, Cape Coast Castle
Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Souvenir of Shiprock
Paul Scott
Overview
Alturas Foundation is proud to have supported Paul Scott with a multi-year Artist in Residence grant from 2016 to 2019 to pursue his New American Scenery project.
In the early nineteenth century, blue and white ceramic “transferware” was imported into North America from England in great quantity. Using appropriated prints from book and magazine illustration, transferware was one of the major innovative “new media” practices of the era and celebrated the newly independent and developing United States with scenes of industrial, cultural and historic significance. With New American Scenery, Mr. Scott has reanimated this historic media to create a significant and meaningful body of new artwork which reflects and comments on contemporary America.
Paul Scott, is a material-based conceptual artist, and creates ceramic artwork that blurs the boundaries between art, craft, and design. His artwork explores the unexpected movement of images through materials, media, cultures, politics, histories, and geographies, and invites us to see these objects in a new way. Scott is an authority on printed vitreous surfaces, and the author of Ceramics in Print, and Horizon: Transferware and Contemporary Ceramics, co-edited with Knut Astrup Bull.
The exhibition New American Scenery was unveiled at RISD Museum, Providence on September 13, 2019, as an installation in the Lucy Truman Aldrich Gallery, part of Raid the Icebox Now, celebrating fifty years since Andy Warhol’s original groundbreaking intervention in the museum. A digital catalogue is available here. The exhibition runs until Dec 30 2021, and thereafter will tour to other venues including an expanded version, incorporating additional historical material from the collection at Albany Institute of History & Art, August 28, 2022 to January 2, 2023.
A British iteration of New American Scenery opened at the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle in September 2020 and runs until January 9, 2022. The exhibition will then tour to Aberystwyth Arts Centre at the University of Wales from July 2022. Other New American Scenery artworks are currently on show at the Walker Art Gallery Liverpool.
The accompanying slide show presents several of the contemporary transferware pieces created during the Alturas Foundation residency featured in the exhibitions.
