See all Grant & Fellowship Recipients

Andrew Scott Ross

2019 Tennessee Fellow

Andrew Scott Ross

Recipient Information

Location

Johnson City, Tennessee

Medium

Multidisciplinary

Year of Award

2019

Grant or Fellowship

Southern Prize and State Fellowships

Grant Amount

$5,000

Artist Biography

Johnson City, Tenn., artist Andrew Scott Ross (b. 1980, Queens, N.Y.) has exhibited in some dozen states and five countries. His solo exhibitions include those at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wis.; New York’s Guggenheim Museum: Peter Lewis Theater; and Atlanta’s Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. Other institutions that have shown his work include the Museum of Art and Design, SmackMellon, Cue Art Foundation and a half dozen galleries in New York City; the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center; the Asheville Museum of Art and Greensboro’s Weatherspoon Art Museum, both in North Carolina; the Hunter Museum of Contemporary Art in Chattanooga and the Knoxville Museum of Art, both in Tennessee; the University of Kansas’ Spencer Museum of Art; Le Commun BAC in Geneva, Switzerland; Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv; the Gallery of the International Pavilion in Ulsan, South Korea; and TPTP Space in Paris, France. Ross’ work is in the permanent collections of MOCA GA, MAD New York, the Spencer Museum and the Deutsche Bank. He received a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art, an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Artist Statement

I am interested in finding alternative methods of interpreting, recording, and visualizing history. Inspired by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, and Wikipedia, which attempt to evenly reflect all of cultural production, I investigate the logic of the museum and how it affects our perceptions of cultures and their histories. I do so by creating a personal museum comprised of objects that attempt to isolate the common socio- and psycho-cultural constructions often embedded within historical display. By using the language of contemporary art to create a critical discourse and distance, the museum reconsiders these cultural constructions through site-specific installations, images, and objects.

The installations in particular mix sculpture and drawing – they play with flatness and depth and are never considered finished works. Many pieces weave references from prehistory or classical antiquity through modern, contemporary and personal imagery. I combine this method with concepts found in anthropology and linguistics such as universalism, exoticism, and cultural appropriation, visualizing debates that have an impact on inquiry in these disciplines.

You could be the next Southern Prize winner.

Interested in entering our competition? Submissions are open until the beginning of December. Review eligibility criteria, then get to work on your application.

Explore this award