Mary Scott is an avid collector of objects and images. She is also a maker of drawings, paintings and other stuff. She travels habitually; for her, travel provides a framework for unsystematic learning. In 2011 she returned to Italy after an absence of 20 years, well-versed in accounts of the eighteenth-century English gentleman’s fascination with the Grand Tour, to undertake her own tour. Her task was to study the remnants of pre-Enlightenment object collections, the ordering of which, preceded taxonomic systems around which museums, today, are arranged. Founded in the traditions of curiosity, these early object collections promoted non-linear, syncretic and analogous forms of knowledge.
Scott is Senior Lecturer and Head of Drawing at the Tasmanian School of Art. Recent exhibitions include 'Keepers and Kind’ (2011), Criterion Gallery, Hobart; 'Wilderness: Balnaves Contemporary Painting’ (2010), Art Gallery of New South Wales; 'Look Out’ (2010), Contemporary Art Spaces Tasmania (CAST) in collaboration with the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG); 'The Keeping Room’ (2009), Criterion Gallery, Hobart; and 'Every Minute of Every Day’ (2009), in ‘Trust’, Ten Days on The Island Festival, Tasmania.
In 2009 Scott won the Hobart City Invitation Art Prize for drawing at TMAG. Her artwork is referenced in numerous professional texts and catalogues and is included in significant public and private collections. In 2010 she was the recipient of the Rising Stars Research Grant, University of Tasmania, and her commitment to teaching and learning has been recognised through seven teaching certificates and two teaching awards, including a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Teaching and Learning (2008), and a Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (2008).
- Writers:
-
Nancy Mauro-Flude
duggim
- Date written:
- 2013
- Last updated:
- 2013
