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Blue and white ceramics are displayed in cases along the walls of a wood-paneled gallery. A case in the foreground contains additional works. A crystal chandelier hangs at top left.
Installation view of Raid the Icebox Now with Paul Scott: New American Scenery on view 09-13-2019 through 12-30-2021 at the RISD Museum.

Raid the Icebox Now with Paul Scott

New American Scenery
September 13, 2019 - December 30, 2021
Blue and white ceramics are displayed in cases along the walls of a wood-paneled gallery. A case in the foreground contains additional works. A crystal chandelier hangs at top left.
Installation view of Raid the Icebox Now with Paul Scott: New American Scenery on view 09-13-2019 through 12-30-2021 at the RISD Museum.

Introduction

This installation juxtaposes early 19th-century Staffordshire ceramic transferwares drawn from the shelves of RISD Museum storage with new Cumbrian Blue(s) artworks. Replacing the porcelain works typically on view in this 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.

In the early 1900s, Staffordshire wares with images of American landscapes became hugely desirable objects, and for the first time, mass-produced industrial tablewares were elevated within museum hierarchies to rival the finest Meissen, Sevres, and Chinese porcelain. The high status of these works did not persist, and the period following World War II saw most relegated to museum storage, where they have gathered dust ever since. My New American Scenery artwork, created for this project, draws attention to the beauty, significance, and influence of original transferware material while examining the postindustrial landscapes of 21st-century America. Themes include industrial dereliction, borders, the physical manifestations of climate change, energy generation and consumption, and the ongoing legacies of invasion, slavery, and racism.

Paul Scott is an English artist who lives and works in Cumbria, UK. He appropriates traditional blue and white transferwares to make artwork for 21st-century audiences. 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.

To view the gallery guide, https://publications.risdmuseum.org/sites/default/files/2020-09/Paul%20Scott%20Gallery%20Guide%20Web.pdf

Raid the Icebox Now is made possible by a lead grant from the National Endowment for the Arts with additional support from Pace Gallery, Taylor Box Company, and a generous in-kind gift from Meyer Sound Laboratories. RISD Museum is supported by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with the generous partnership of the Rhode Island School of Design, its Board of Trustees, and Museum Governors.

Curatorial Collaboration

Exhibition images

Blue and white ceramics are displayed in cases along the walls of a wood-paneled gallery. A case in the foreground contains additional works. A crystal chandelier hangs at top left.

Events

upcoming exhibition

Raid the Icebox Now with Paul Scott: New American Scenery
September 13, 2019 - July 11, 2021
  • Think and Drink

Think and Drink

New American Scenery
October 17, 2019 / 6-8 pm

More Events +

Projects & Publications

Publications

  • Digital Publication

Raid the Icebox Now with Paul Scott: New American Scenery

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of its exhibition Raid the Icebox I with Andy Warhol, the RISD Museum has engaged 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.

Articles

K-12 Virtual Visit: Paul Scott, New American Scenery, 2019

Why is contemporary English artist Paul Scott interested in a ceramic technique and imagery from the 1700-1800s? How does he work with transferware to comment on environmental issues and systemic racism in the United States? 

Videos

Shorts

Raid the Icebox Now

Shorts

Paul Scott

Selected Objects

A deep blue ceramic platter with a central illustration of a large ship, framed by a border of seashells, coral, and marine motifs.

Enoch Wood and Sons

Cape Coast Castle Platter

Ralph Stevenson & Williams

Pitcher

Enoch Wood and Sons

Cup Plate

Joseph Stubbs

State House Boston Plate

Buffalo Pottery

Landing of Roger Williams Pitcher

Joseph Stubbs

Boston State House

Ralph Stevenson & Williams

City Hotel New York Plate

Rowland and Marsellus

Transferware Plate with Scenes of Providence
  • More objects +

Exhibition Checklist

Raid the Icebox Now with Paul Scott : New American Scenery

September 13, 2019 - December 30, 2021
View Checklist pdf
View Checklist pdf
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