PAUL SCOTT: CONFECTED LANDSCAPES, CULTURAL WALLPAPER AND CONTEMPORARY VIGNETTES

摘要

Print is central to the English ceramic tradition. From the popular and political prints of the early nineteenth century to the extraordinary ubiquity of the Willow Pattern, printed pots helped disseminate and democratise a visual language once the preserve of aristocracy. As the exhibition title suggests, printed ceramic is part of our cultural wallpaper. Paul Scott is at the forefront of an increasing number of makers who use print as an historic medium with which to comment on contemporary culture. Scott provides a contemporary take on the pastoral, the stylised rural fantasies of the past providing a fitting medium for questioning the manufactured landscapes of the present. His 'confected landscapes' disassemble and disrupt the familiar compositions of Wedgwood and Spode, collaging the soft romantic underglaze blue of popular history with contemporary motifs such as smoking power stations and rhythmic pylon wires. Scott collects plates and dishes both old and new as 'carriers' for his images and many of these come ready-decorated, antique tableware transformed by the addition of a barbed wire fence or jet plane scudding across the nineteenth century sky. These interventions are poignant and unsettling, poetic and political.