SCOTT HOCKING

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  Babel 2015-2016
  RCA 2016
  Signs 2015-present
  Celestial Ship of the North (Emergency Ark) 2015
  Narcissus Incorporated 2015
  Lot Circles 2014-present
  Rusty Sputnik 2013 / Rustic Sputnik 2016
  Coronal Mass Ejection 2013
  The Egg and Michigan Central Train Station 2007-2013
  In The Strait Of The Crimson Nain 2007-present
  Detroit Nights 2007-present
  Shipwrecks 1999-present
  Mercury Retrograde 2012
  The End of the World 2012
  The Quarry / Steinbruch 2013
  The Secrets of Nature 2012-2014
  Cast Concrete in the Auto Age 2008-present
  Bad Graffiti 2007-present
  The Mound Project 2007-present
  Garden of the Gods 2009-2011
  Tartarus 2011
  Triumph of Death 2010
  Sisyphus and the Voice of Space 2010
  New Mound City 2010
  Ziggurat and Fisher Body 21 2007-2009
  Roosevelt Warehouse and the Cauldron 2007-2010
  Fountain of Youth Vending Machine 2008-2010
  The Zone 1999-2010
  Lao Zhu and the Flour Factory 2009
  Detroit Midden Mound 2008
  RELICS 2001-2016
  Tire Pyramid 2006
  Animals 2006
  Icelandic Saga 2006
  Scrappers 2000-2004
  Found Slides 2000-2004
  Pictures of a City - Detroit 1997-2006
  Alchemical Works 1997-2006
  Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship Application 2017

 

Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship application: Please scroll to the Right to view all 10 examples of previous artworks. Details of each project are listed above each image.

1) RCA (2016) is a site-specific installation wherein all materials were salvaged from a massive former Indianapolis RCA complex - last used as a recycling plant, filled with abandoned, un-recycled waste. Plastic, paper, and foam - thousands of recyclables that would never be recycled, were distorted by years of erosion and arson attempts. The burned polystyrene foam, plastic blobs melted by fires, and dozens of other artifacts were used to create the installation: a kind of ceremonial dystopian styro temple, future foamy glacier, visceral talismanic alien reliquary, polystyrene mound site and archaeological dig reliquary room.

 

2) BABEL (2015-16) is site-specific two-part installation that crosses between the exhibition spaces and abandoned spaces of the Gare Saint Sauveur: a former railway station in the northern French city of Lille. The work is based on the mythical Tower of Babel stories, the Salon de Paris, themes of mysticism and transformation, and the history of the site itself. Materials were found throughout the Gare grounds and adjacent buildings, as well as the Braderie de Lille - the 800 year-old, largest street market in Europe - and combined with materials sent from Detroit. Using artifacts from Detroit and Lille, I attempted to transform the spaces into a future-past wunderkammer, exploring ideas of time, language, mythology, alchemy, and perception. (below: part 1 exhibition side of Babel - with part 2 visible through window).

 

3) BABEL (2015-16) is site-specific two-part installation that crosses between the exhibition spaces and abandoned spaces of the Gare Saint Sauveur: a former railway station in the northern French city of Lille. The work is based on the mythical Tower of Babel stories, the Salon de Paris, themes of mysticism and transformation, and the history of the site itself. Materials were found throughout the Gare grounds and adjacent buildings, as well as the Braderie de Lille - the 800 year-old, largest street market in Europe - and combined with materials sent from Detroit. Using artifacts from Detroit and Lille, I attempted to transform the spaces into a future-past wunderkammer, exploring ideas of time, language, mythology, alchemy, and perception. (below: part 2 section of Babel, visible through part 1 exhibition space window).

 

4) THE CELESTIAL SHIP OF THE NORTH, aka Emergency Ark, aka the Barnboat (2015), is a site-specific installation and permanent sculpture in the farmlands of Michigan's Thumb. Based on ideas of ancient vessels, duality, alchemical symbolism, destruction myths, and deluge stories, and shaped by the site's history and incredibly consistent winds, the Barnboat was built over the course of 3 months, and made entirely from the beams and boards of a collapsing 1890s barn that stood in its place. Built on the Goretzki farmland, the Ship will continue to decay, just as the barn it was made from did.

 

5) NARCISSUS INCORPORTED (2015) is a site-specific installation inside a one-time Pickle Factory on Detroit's Eastside, formerly known as Maldaver Incorporated, specifically utilizing a 100+ year-old Standard Motor Truck shed at the rear of the building. The installation was built using only artifacts collected throughout the Pickle and adjoining properties, all owned by 3 generations of the same family. Integrating the layered history of the structure - from a rustic cabin for horseless carriages to a storage facility for chromed plastic auto parts - the surreal office-like shedquarters of Narcissus Inc. is situated on the threshold of an unknown primitive space-age future-past, playing with ideas of mythology, ceremony, masculinity, industry, and history.

  6) CAST CONCRETE IN THE AUTO AGE (2008-2016) is a photography and sculptural installation project documenting and working within reinforced cast concrete structures of the last 150 years. Utilizing cast conrete sites throughout Detroit and various other cities worldwide (Shanghai, Utica, Wolfsburg), installations are built onsite, photographs document the process, and artifacts are collected and catalogued. Below: view of installation as installed at the School of the Art Institute Chicago - the plinth in the foreground is covered in an assortment of stalagmites retrieved from abandoned cast-concrete stuctures.  

7) THE EGG AND MICHIGAN CENTRAL TRAIN STATION (2007-2013) is a site-specific sculptural installation and photography project created within Detroit's 100-year-old former train depot, vacant for over 20 years. The installation is made from thousands of sheet marble fragments that litter most of the 17-story structure's upper floors - remnants of the once marble-lined corridor walls. Based on the ancient symbolic meanings of the egg, as well as stacked stones that can be found worldwide [cairns]. Built over the course of 18 months, the project culminated with the Egg's eventual destruction.

  8) THE END OF THE WORLD exhbition (2012-13), at Detroit's Susanne Hilberry Gallery, included the installations MERCURY RETROGRADE, & THE END OF THE WORLD, and the photo series DETROIT NIGHTS (2007-16) - MERCURY RETROGRADE (2012) is a mixed media installation based on alchemical symbologies, mythologies, astrologies, deities, eschatologies, and the afterlife. Centered on a 1955 Mercury Monterrey, the installation included 300 taxidermy animals in diorama cases, and various other materials including salt, sulfur, and mercury. THE END OF THE WORLD is an installation of over 200 books covering destruction mythologies, eschatologies, transformations, and ideas of end times. Based on archetypal and alchemical imagery, Brueghel's Towers of Babel, and the use of the word Maya as both an ancient Mesoamerican civilization and the Hindu word meaning illusion. DETROIT NIGHTS is an ongoing project, documenting the streets, railroads, quiet corners and unpredictable public lighting of Detroit at night.  

9) NEW MOUND CITY (2010) is a site-specific installation and photography project created for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Based on the original nickname of St Louis – “Mound City” - the project documents current sites where ancient Native American earthworks once sat, creates contemporary 'mounds' in their place, and questions what 'mounds' will be left behind by our current culture, and how these artifacts will be interpreted by future archaeologists. The project culminated with a collection of future relics, a photo series, and the creation of various mounds, such as the "Toxic Glove Mound" below

 

- Click here to return to beginning of Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship application -

10) ZIGGURAT and Fisher Body 21 (2007-09) is a site-specific sculptural installation made from 6,201 wooden floor-blocks within Detroit's abandoned Fisher Body Plant 21. Based on ancient pyrmidal earthworks and stone monuments, the Ziggurat project contrasts contemporary ideas with ancient ones, and questions the difference between a ruin and a monument. Using only materials found onsite (creosote-preserved pine end-grain wood blocks that were commonly used to line cast-concrete factory floors roughly 100 years ago) the Ziggurat took about 8 months to build, and was eventually destroyed by the EPA in 2009.