Pottery and Porcelain Lecture
11.14.2019
Paul Scott, whose installation New American Scenery is on display in the museum’s Porcelain Gallery, has spent the last 5 years investigating how 19th century imported Staffordshire blue-and-white printed transferwares formed part of the new media of their age and updating these works with contemporary issues. His lecture details the fascinating journeys of images and objects through medias, histories and geographies. His narrative includes details of extensive research into museum print archives (including the V&A, Wedgwood, Spode), observations from travels through the contemporary American landscape and new Cumbrian Blue(s) artworks.
Paul Scott is an English artist who appropriates traditional blue and white transferwares to make artwork for a twenty-first century audience. Using selective erasure, new prints, collage, breakage, and re-assemblage he alters historic tablewares to depict the contemporary landscape. At the same time he also commemorates and celebrates a rich, complex historical genre which is inextricably linked to wider visual and political cultures. New American Scenery is made possible by a lead grant from the Alturas Foundation with additional support from Ferrin Contemporary and Arts Council England. Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s) artworks can be found in private and public collections around the world, including V&A in London, National Museums of Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Wales. In the United States collections include art museums in Boston, Brooklyn, Newark, Carnegie in Pittsburgh, the Museum of Art and Design in New York, Chipstone and Alturas Foundations as well as the RISD Museum.