CURRENTLY ON VIEW
NEW AMERICAN SCENERY TOUR
RISD MUSEUM | Providence, RI | September 13, 2019 – July 11, 2021
UK: Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, County Durham, England | September 26, 2020 – February 28, 2021
Albany Institute of History & Art in Albany, NY | Opening August 28th, 2021 – January 3rd, 2022
September 13, 2019 – July 11, 2021
now open to RISD students, re-opening to public Fall 2020
‘RAID THE ICEBOX NOW with PAUL SCOTT’ | RISD MUSEUM, Providence, RI
This installation juxtaposes early 19th-century Staffordshire ceramic transferwares drawn from the shelves of the RISD Museum storage with new Cumbrian Blue(s) artworks. Replacing the porcelain works typically on view in the Lucy Truman Aldrich gallery, New American Scenery melds historic printed tablewares, altered antique ceramics, and reclaimed Syracuse China plates with new screenprints to update early transferware subjects for the 21st century.
RISD installation photography by Erik Gould. All other photography by John Polak.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
In the early nineteenth century, imported Staffordshire blue-and-white printed transferwares formed part of the new media of their age. Collected at the beginning of the twentieth century as iconic depictions of the early, independent United States, many were later donated to public art museums inspiring a new wave of pictorial wares.
Over the last five years, Paul Scott has been investigating these transferwares as well as the contemporary landscape of the United States. An ongoing dialogue between documentary, historical, travel and artistic research has led to the creation of a new substantive body of artwork, New American Scenery.
In it, Scott references archives, objects, the motives, and thinking of original collectors as well as the post-industrial landscapes of twenty-first century America. The new work deals with issues surrounding globalization, energy generation and consumption, capitalism and immigration, and other legacies of history. The artwork includes antique tablewares re-worked by selective erasure, re-glazing, and the addition of newly printed decals. Others involve the re-use of cut, broken fragments using collage and traditional restoration processes, as well as prints and other works on paper.
MORE ON PAUL SCOTT
Paul Scott is an English artist who lives and works in Cumbria, UK. He appropriates traditional blue and white transferwares to make contemporary artwork for 21st-century audiences. At the same time he commemorates and celebrates a rich, complex historical genre that is inextricably linked to wider visual and political cultures. Alturas Foundation supported the creation of New American Scenery as part of its Artist In Residence program. Other funders included Arts Council England, Ferrin Contemporary and RISD Museum.
PRESS & PUBLICATIONS
On the Threshold: Paul Scott New American Scenery”
Essay by Jo Dahn
‘Raid the Ice Box Now’ Digital Catalog
Produced by the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, 2019
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of its exhibition Raid the Icebox I with Andy Warhol, the RISD Museum is engaging contemporary artists and designers Pablo Bronstein, Nicole Eisenman, Pablo Helguera, Beth Katleman, Simone Leigh, Sebastian Ruth, Paul Scott, and Triple Canopy to create new bodies of work or create a unique curatorial project using the museum as a site for critical, creative production and presentation. Employing the galleries and digital platforms as well as spaces beyond the museum walls, these artists will question dominant narratives and highlight the strengths and idiosyncrasies of the museum’s collection, which includes more than 100,000 works spanning ancient times to the present. A landmark example of artist-curated museum exhibitions, Raid the Icebox I with Andy Warhol (1970) presented entire sections of objects as they appeared in storage, with little or no connoisseurial regard for their condition, authenticity, or art historical status. It remains one of the most celebrated and subversive exhibitions in contemporary art history.
Raid the Icebox Now is made possible by a lead grant from the National Endowment for the Arts with additional support from the RISD Museum Associates, Judy and Robert Mann, Taylor Box Company, and a generous in-kind gift from Meyer Sound Laboratories.
PROGRAMMING
UPCOMING PROGRAMS
August 28, 2021 – January 3, 2022. New Dates.
New American Scenery, will be presented in an expanded exhibition at Albany Institute of Art & History, Albany, NY.
PAST PROGRAMS
Lecture & Tour:
Paul Scott: New American Scenery
presented by The Pottery and Porcelain Club
at RISD, Providence, RI
November 14, 2019 from 10am-12pm.
Free and open to the public.
Link to recorded talk HERE.
More information HERE.
Lecture:
Paul Scott, Artist: New American Scenery, Transferwares for the 21st century
presented by American Ceramic Circle 2019 Symposium
at Old Salem Museum & Gardens/Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts
Winston-Salem, NC
Saturday, November 9, 2019. 9:30 a.m.
Registration required.
More information HERE.