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Press release for similar installation to that of photograph
Peter Scott's work intrudes into the safety of domestic settings while considering issues of class and privilege. This untitled installation appears at first to contain nothing but elegant wallpaper. Upon closer examination, images of police sketches of criminals emerge before the viewer. This work presents the American preoccupation with crime as well as our fascination with those who have transgressed the social order.
The collaborative nature of a police sketch, a drawing created by a third party based on others' impressions of a crime, poses unusual questions for portraiture. A likeness based on hearsay of a subject whose prolonged anonymity presents a lingering threat to the public's safety, this style of drawing embodies both a sense of urgency through it's purpose while simultaneously remaining ambiguous, its success ultimately dependent on the apprehension of the subject.
In re-drawing these sketches on the reverse of wallpaper, a surface which suggests comfort and familiarity, one's confidence in the distinctions between the world "out there" and private experience of it is called into question. The pattern and surface texture, which usually function as decoration, in this case alternately camouflage and reveal the heads beneath, but never completely contain or obliterate them. The pleasantness of a comfortable room decorated by satin walls is disquieted by the notion that they lack solidity, providing no safe borders between ourselves and the world at large.
Peter Scott |
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