Interactive installations

click on thumbnails for details . . .


2011
Parallel Lines • 15 Minutes of Fame


the concept . . .

Parallel Lines15 Minutes of Fame is a series of photo-based encaustic paintings (subjective "happenings" with a prison bed), with an interactive sculpture installation entitled 15 Minutes of Fame featuring the bed and suitcase depicted in the paintings.

Artist's Statement:

Years ago I met a Cree youth who told me that within sixteen years he had been through fourteen foster homes. He felt unloved and unwanted. "One day," he told me, "I was so depressed, I threw a shovel through a jeweller's window: I knew at least I'd be wanted in jail."

His story stayed with me. Years later I was given an opportunity to create works with prison beds. This arose through an art commission in which I was invited to create artworks utilizing waste from government buildings. Correctional Services Canada asked what I could do with discarded prison beds. I was intrigued with the challenge. With the youth's story re-sounding in my mind, I took a prison bed around the city of Toronto and engaged photographer John Davidson to document a series of my live solo performance ‘happenings’ through digital photography.

The photos, printed on archival paper, are mounted on birch panels forming a base upon which I apply layers of encaustic (wax) paint to create imagined possibilities blurring the boundary between painting and photography. The original photo captures only a partial version of reality - aspects of the location, mood and lighting. I delve into the image to exploit the tangible but not captured on film, the invisible possible inner life beyond the borders. I fuse the lines between reality and imagination, the actual and the possible, real and remembered, the inner and outer worlds. The result is a series of evocative and deliberately ambiguous photo-based encaustic paintings exploring choice as a determining element in our lives.

Parallel Lines is the third project in a series of works featuring prison beds reclaimed from the former Kingston Penitentiary for Women and previously slept upon by an array of disturbed and occasionally notorious women.

see also:


LockDown


15 Minutes of Fame

- an interactive installation created and facilitated by Amanta Scott, featuring:

• a bare prison bed (from the former Kingston Penitentiary for Women)
• a prison blanket, sheet & pillow; and,
• a standard-issue prison suitcase containing assorted personal items . . .



Visitors are invited to:

  • open the suitcase; consider, select and arrange items upon and around the bed to create a new installation - a personal artistic statement about incarceration - then:
  • present and discuss their installation with other visitors
  • write about their installation in the Book of Fame, which is on site and open for everyone to read.
  • Other visitors are invited to write comments about this and other installations in the Book of Fame.
  • Each installation remains on display for a maximum of 15 minutes.
  • Installations are documented through digital photos and posted subsequently online.

Exhibitions
2010







SpeakEasy
Annual Fine Art Show
Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, ON

• Sighting
• Waiting
• Intent
• Dreams

Elaine Fleck Gallery, Toronto, ON [encaustic painting]

• Intent
• Dreams





2009













Cube Gallery, Ottawa, ON
curator Don Monet

• Reverie
• Intent
• Ophelia
• One
• Desire
• Waiting
• Dreams
• Contemplation
• Consequences
• Solitude
• 15 Minutes of Fame

Living Arts Centre, Mississauga, ON
curator: Cole Swanson

• Desire
• 15 Minutes of Fame










2008





Nuit Blanche Toronto
curator: Wayne Baerwaldt

• 15 Minutes of Fame
• Consequences • Contemplation


2005




Art Gallery of Algoma,
Sault Ste. Marie, ON
curator: Michael Burtch

• 15 Minutes of Fame



looking back . . .

Syncretic Art
- the fusion of disparate elements -
combines some or any of:
visual art - sculpture, painting,
surround-sound audio, video,
soundsculpture, new media;
music, dance, theatre, mythology,
environment
& contemporary archaeology.

copyright @ 2011 • All Rights Reserved • Amanta Scott • www.amantascott.com • Revised: Thursday, May 5, 2011