Manhood series (2021)
The portrayal of men in the classic western movie has become synonymous with the white male fantasy. Through the use of imagery associated with the genre, the artist attempts to communicate the destructive nature of these constructs.
The classic scenes of the gunfight, the saloon brawl and the cowboy on horseback inspired a masculine culture that has influenced generations. Jane Tomkins writes in West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (1992) that: “what is most interesting about Westerns… is their relation to gender, and especially the way they created a model for men who came of age in the twentieth century”. Lee Clark Mitchell suggests in his book Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film (1996) that the primary concern of the western movie was to show how manhood could be retained and maintained.
Created during the pandemic, Scott’s Manhood series explores how these models of manhood from Westerns played out on the global stage in the decisions made by world leaders, subconsciosuly influenced by these cinematic tropes.
With the interventions the artist makes to this imagery, the work creates new narratives that expose elements that were not apparent in the original composition. The ruggish cuts and tears reflect the primitivism of 'the decision', while the arrangement of the collage attempts to hold onto something mirroring the composition of the original singular image.