John Scott: Hypertension

December 2 - 31, 2004

Born in Windsor, Ontario in 1950, John Scott is best known for his Apocalypse Trans-Am, a blackened body of a Pontiac Trans-Am with the Book of Revelations from the New Testament inscribed by hand into its surface. This works is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

 

Over the past thirty years, John Scott’s drawings have taken many forms to convey his unique vision of the world. His works are frenetic, poignant visions depicting figures that are often hybrids of humans, animals and machines. His recurring motifs evoke a survivor’s esthetic with an edge of black humour.

 

According to Scott, these new words are “voodoo science, incantations, vortex imagery, a quantum bullet”. This exhibition of drawings includes many portraits - faces that reflect a fractured spirit resulting from the collision between technology, industry, politics and spirituality. They are fierce testaments to vitality, charged with a sense of urgency concurrent with the exhibition of contemporary drawings opening at Museum London.

 

John Scott was recipient of the first Governor General’s Award for Visual Art in 2002.