A two-part exhibition:

McMaster Museum of Art Fall 2015 | Art Gallery of Hamilton Winter 2016

Organized by The Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, Iowa

Curator: Daniel Strong

MCMASTER MUSEUM OF ART

22 AUGUST – 5 DECEMBER 2015

PUBLIC RECEPTION

THURSDAY  |  SEPTEMBER 17, 2015  |  6 – 8 pm

ARTIST’S TALK

John Scott and Ann MacDonald in conversation 

THURSDAY  |  OCTOBER 29, 2015  |  6 – 8 pm

Ann MacDonald is Director/Curator, Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough

In coarse black lines, hand-scratched metal, fragmented text and visceral colour, Toronto-based artist John Scott traces the trajectory of heavy industry, high technology, military might and maniacal folly as they clear-cut their way through blighted landscapes and a besieged human psyche. From his working-class roots in Windsor, the self-aware and wry-humoured Scott has remained consistent and eerily prescient in raw-edged drawings and found-object installations that plot a vector from Space Age optimism—mankind’s ‘‘giant leap’’ in the 20th century to the nihilism of unceasing war and terror in the 21st. In just over 35 years we’ve gone from the Voyager spacecraft to the Predator drone, and all along John Scott seems to have seen this new reality coming.

The exhibition at McMaster presents John Scott works drawn from over 30 years with a focus on his studio practice of the past 15 years. It includes works on paper, sculpture and two reconstructed installations, Bunny Boudoir and Europe. Scott’s works are represented in major Canadian public collections and in the United States and Europe. He was the first recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Visual Art in 2000. He is also a long-time faculty member at OCADU.

Exhibition catalogue includes essays by

Daniel Strong, Ihor Holubizky, Gary Michael Dault, and Deirdre Hanna.