| Other works by this Artist |
|
 |
City Gallery
30 May - 22 Aug 2004 |
|
 |
Curatorial
Statement | Artist's
Résumé
Clad scantily in lacy lingerie, the women in Ian Scott's 'Model
series' paintings pose provocatively next to famous modernist
paintings as if they are selling us cars in a showroom. Hung
against a bland brick wall, which could be a lounge room in
a suburban housing development, the paintings are iconic -
from the geometric abstraction of Kasimir Malevich to a funky
'dot' painting by British art star Damien Hirst. The women,
copied directly from Playboy, arrange themselves before
us with alluring glances and blatantly sexual poses.
Scott's paintings make no distinction between these two very
different examples of contemporary western iconography (Western
art heroes and Playboy magazine). We might earnestly
conclude that Scott is comparing the objectification of the
model to the object nature of a work of art, both commodified
for consumption in the marketplace. At the same time, the
playfulness of the juxtaposition shows a sense of gleeful
humour as the artist prods at the boundaries of acceptable
taste.
The trajectory of Ian Scott's career spans his early days as one of New Zealand's
few Pop artists, his renowned geometric abstraction of the 1970s and, since the
80s, his interest in post-modernism and appropriation. Throughout these changes
his paintings have always been stamped with a celebratory recognition of the
ordinary and the banal, as well as a wilful pleasure in the ridiculous.
Emma Bugden
|
|
|
|
|
