SCOTT HOCKING

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  -- Recent Installations and Photography Projects --
  Bone Black 2019
  Seventeen Shitty Mountains 2019
  Seventeen Shitty Mountains 2018
  The Sleeper / Cowcatcher 2018
  OLD 2018
  Hanging Cairn 2017
  Massa Confusa 2017
  RCA 2016
  Babel 2015-2016
  Celestial Ship of the North (Emergency Ark) 2015
  Signs 2015-present
  Narcissus Incorporated 2015
  Lot Circles 2014-present
  Rustic Sputnik 2016 / Rusty Sputnik 2013
  Coronal Mass Ejection 2013
  The Egg and Michigan Central Train Station 2007-2013
  Mercury Retrograde 2012
  The End of the World 2012
  The Quarry / Steinbruch 2013
  The Secrets of Nature 2012-2014
  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
   
  -- Ongoing Detroit-Based Photo Series' --
  In The Strait Of The Crimson Nain 2007-present
  Detroit Nights 2007-present
  Shipwrecks 1999-present
  Delrazed 2007-present
  Holes 2007-present
  Trees 2007-present
  Memorials 2007-present
  Detroit Wildlife 2007-present
  The Mound Project 2007-present
  Bad Graffiti 2007-present
  The Zone 1999-present
  Cast Concrete in the Auto Age 2008-present
  Mid Century Modern Playground Sculptures 2007-present
  -- Other Installations and Photography Projects --
  Roosevelt Warehouse and the Cauldron 2007-2010
  Fountain of Youth Vending Machine 2008-2010
  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 and Drawings 1997-present
 

BONE BLACK is a site-specific installation and photography project created over the course of 5 weeks in the Spring of 2019. Based on an 1890’s photograph of a massive pile of bison-bones at the Michigan Carbon Works plant in Detroit, and the “bone black” pigment created from their process of burning animal bones, practiced for approximately 150 years, the installation was commissioned by Cranbrook Art Museum, for the exhibition “Landlord Colors: On Art, Economy, & Materiality,” curated by Laura Mott. The work was designed site-specifically within the vacant Assembly Bay building of the former Northern Crane industrial sites, along an old railroad street called Guoin, one block from the Detroit River, in the historic Warehouse District. Focusing on the metaphorical “bones” of Detroit, approximately 35 abandoned boats – Shipwrecks - and related debris, illegally dumped and neglected throughout the City, were collected via trailer-towing pick-ups and various winches, and hauled to the Northern Crane site as materials for the work. 33 of these Shipwrecks were suspended and stacked within the Assembly Bay, creating a ghost fleet or funerary procession through time, flowing westward parallel to the Detroit River. 22 of the boats were washed with the Bone Black pigment, allowing each Shipwreck’s colors, graffiti, and history to bleed through. Multiple boats had trees growing within them, which were preserved during install, with the tree-boats situated under the collapsed sections of roof, so they could soak up all of the rain. Playing with ideas of archeology, anthropology, ceremony, and mysticism, the installation was designed to transform the cavernous factory setting into a future-archaic scene from some alternate history, perhaps conveying an underwater view, looking up from the stillness of a seafloor. Photographed and documented over time, the suspended Ships were lowered in stages, hanging nose-down, and finally stacked into a central burial mound – a Shipwreck version of the Carbon Works bison-bone mountain. Exhibited from June through October of 2019, the entire installation was dismantled and destroyed by Autumn, with all 33 fiberglass wrecks being crushed into dumpsters, as they have no scrap-value and cannot be recycled - which is why they are so commonly dumped in Detroit.

Bone Black and the exhibition Landlord Colors were featured in Forbes, Hyperallergic ,PBS Newshour,WDET's Culture Shift, the Detroit Free Press and Artnet News

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