Jonathan Scott, Burn Your Neighbours, September 27 - October 21, 2012

Using a range of materials, from industrially manufactured to hand crafted objects and drawings, Jonathan Scott’s work aims to explore some of the factors of antagonism within our society. From observations of urban social and political structures his practice seeks to re-contextualise specific utilitarian forms, coupling them with their latent emotional value. Of particular interest is the relationship between the will of the individual vs. that of society and how the potential discordance of these forces relates to concepts of freedom and domination.

Burn Your Neighbours is a new body of work that uses water gilding (a craft that hasn’t chance since its pre-renaissance invention) as an element to explore value and history and juxtapose this with the contemporary content of the printed images. In this work Scott focuses on the interplay between the flat images and the solid forms in an attempt to destabilise both the content and formal concerns, in an effort to expand their meaning while focusing on emancipating human drives and the situations that they arise from, be it the crumbling building or the reflection of gold.

Jonathan Scott is a Scottish artist based in Toronto. He received his Master of Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art in 2005 and subsequently was granted a number of significant awards, including a Henry Moore Foundation Grant. He has made a number of solo exhibitions in the UK, and has exhibited internationally, including Australia, China, Mexico, Sweden, Germany. Recent exhibitions include ‘Face of an Angel, Voice of a Demon’ (commissioned by EmergeD as part of the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art); ‘New Ruins’ (EmergeD in the City Watch House, Melbourne); ‘Re-escape’ (Transmission Gallery project in Hamburg); ‘Exit Strategy’ (CAFA, Beijing); ‘Syncopations: Art from Great Britain Now’ (Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm); ‘Prospect Drawing Prize’ (Tea Buildings, London). This is his first exhibition in Canada. 

Exhibition runs September 27 - October 21

Reception October 4th, 6-9pm

Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects

1082 Queen Street West

Toronto, ON M6J 1H8