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Sean Scully: Inside Outside Media Release Sean Scully: Inside Outside Media Release Longside Gallery and Open Air 29 September 2018–6 January 2019 “I have spent my life making the melancholic into something irresistible. Because the world has changed around me and become more regretful, my paintings have become more true.” Sean Scully Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) presents Sean Scully: Inside Outside, the largest-ever presentation of sculptures and first exhibition of sculpture and painting in the UK by the Irish-born artist. Exploring concepts of landscape and abstraction with human experience, the exhibition unites sculpture with important recent paintings on aluminium, together with works on paper. Drawing out ideas pertinent to the singularity of YSP and its landscape, this is a poetic, robust experience that embraces the Park’s topography and Scully’s exceptional vigour, as well as his belief that in life and art there is perpetual discovery. The exhibition presents an artist at the height of his powers. Aged 72, it is evident that there is no curtailment of Scully’s energy, drive and vision. Keenly aware of the labour that dominated the lives of his mining family, Scully’s practice is one of great rigour and toil, his output prodigious. For YSP he has made new paintings and sculpture – resolutely contemporary works that integrate an inclination towards geometry with the romantic sincerity of landscape painting in the historical tradition. Born in Dublin in 1945, raised in London, and now resident in New York, London and Germany, Scully is considered to be one of the most important abstract painters working today. Drawing on European traditions but with the distinct character and scale prevalent Shadow Stack, 2018 and Landline Inwards, 2015 in the USA, Scully is credited with reinvigorating abstract painting. Whilst best known for © the artist, courtesy his paintings on canvas and aluminium, and works on paper, during Scully’s early years as Sean Scully a student at Newcastle University (1968–72) and as a Graduate Fellow at Harvard University (1972–73), he made experimental sculptures and structures, often using materials associated with women’s domestic work which alluded to or shared the grids and frameworks then current in his painting. Raised in an economically deprived South London household, Scully recalls being the darner of socks for the family, and considers that the weft and weave of this early experience informed the development of both his grid-like painting and sculpture. Over the past 15 years Scully has returned to sculpture, working in steel and stone to make powerful structures that both assert and subvert their materiality. The monumental Wall Dale Cubed (2018) in Lower Park is the latest sculpture that relates to a series of paintings that Scully began in the 1990s. This new sculpture made for YSP uses 1,000 tonnes of Yorkshire stone from a local quarry and was constructed over many weeks. Referencing ancient dry stone walls, such as those commonly found in Yorkshire, Mexico, Egypt and especially those of the Irish Aran Islands, which Scully has intensively photographed, this colossal work is built in the same way throughout, so that “when looking at the outside of the block, one can feel the inside without being able to see it”. In contrast, the Corten steel Crate of Air (2018) in the Country Park investigates fragmented space or ‘boxes of air’ that form their own frames to the landscape beyond. The angular shapes Scully uses in this sculpture resonate with his paintings and is made up of individual sections that form relationships once pieced together. Sited in YSP’s historic landscape, these vast metallic and stone sculptures demand a physical trek across the landscape that is extended further uphill through the former hunting ground of the Bretton Estate to Longside Gallery. The experience of walking between the sculptures and gallery thereby matching the energy and physicality of the exhibition. A former horse-riding school, Longside Gallery is a large light-filled square space, overlooking the 18th-century parkland through enormous windows. Measuring over 8m in length and 2.8m in height, Scully’s exceptional painting Blue Note (2016) occupies the principle wall, grounding the entire installation with a series of six alternately coloured and striped aluminium panels. Blue Note is a summation of themes Scully has been rehearsing for many years; a lodestar to his practice. Especially for YSP, and in response to the Yorkshire landscape, Scully has developed further Landline paintings, a series begun in 1999 in which he references liminal spaces – where land meets sky, sea, river, wall – with almost all vertical forms removed to create, “a side-to-side motion”. Other sculptures inside and outside the gallery are formed from Yorkshire stone and rusted Corten steel, bronze, as well as painted aluminium. Relating again to horizontally striped paintings, they are arrangements of stacked elements, such as square steel frames and circular coins, placed one on top of the other. Constantin Brancusi is an obvious precursor, but in the most elemental sense these works recall a child stacking pebble on pebble, block on block, to form one of the most basic sculptural forms. In Scully’s hands these stacked works are a muscular extension of vertical paintings and, as in much of Scully’s work, the biographical. He has spoken of a student job, stacking flattened cardboard boxes from a supermarket into a lorry: hard work, protruding staples lacerating his skin – but aware all the time of creating teetering sculptural forms that gradually filled the vehicle’s void with mass. Alongside paintings and sculpture in the gallery are selected works on paper together with drawings related to sculpture. A limited-edition print accompanies the exhibition to help support YSP, a not-for-profit institution with a highly significant educational remit. Also opening in September is Sean Scully: Landline at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, featuring never before seen works from the artist’s acclaimed Landline series, from 13 September 2018 – 6 January 2019. NOTES TO EDITORS ABOUT SEAN SCULLY For over a generation, Sean Scully has been considered one of the world’s leading abstract painters. Born in 1945 in Dublin and raised in London, he now lives between New York and Germany. He was elected a Royal Academician in 2013 and was twice shortlisted for the Turner Prize, in 1989 and in 1993. He has shown in the world’s most important museums and galleries and had a major retrospective which toured multiple venues in China from 2015–2017. Scully’s work is held in numerous public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth; Tate, London; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K20K21, Düsseldorf; Albertina, Vienna; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Instituto Valencia d’Arte Modern, Valencia; Guangzhou Museum of Art, Guangzhou and China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China. FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS Matisse | Scully, KEWENIG, Berlin, Germany, 6 September–27 October 2018. Sean Scully: Landline, Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA, 12 September 2018–6 January 2019. Sean Scully: Uninsideout, Blain|Southern London, UK, 3 October–17 November 2018. Sea Star: Sean Scully at The National Gallery, The National Gallery, UK, 13 April–11 August 2019. ABOUT YORKSHIRE SCULPTURE PARK Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is the leading international centre for modern and contemporary sculpture which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2017. It is an independent charitable trust and registered museum (number 1067908) situated in the 500-acre, 18th-century Bretton Hall estate in West Yorkshire. Founded in 1977 by Executive Director Peter Murray, YSP was the first sculpture park in the UK, and is the largest of its kind in Europe, providing the only place in Europe to see Barbara Hepworth’s The Family of Man in its entirety alongside a significant collection of sculpture, including bronzes by Henry Moore and site-specific works by Andy Goldsworthy, David Nash and James Turrell. YSP mounts a world-class, year-round temporary exhibitions programme including some of the world’s leading artists across five indoor galleries and the open air. Recent highlights include exhibitions by Alfredo Jaar, Tony Cragg, Not Vital, KAWS, Bill Viola, Anthony Caro, Fiona Banner, Ai Weiwei, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Amar Kanwar, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Joan Miró and Jaume Plensa. More than 80 works on display across the estate include major sculptures by Phyllida Barlow, Ai Weiwei, Roger Hiorns, Sol LeWitt, Joan Miró and Dennis Oppenheim. YSP’s driving purpose for 40 years has been to encourage, nurture and sustain interest in and debate around contemporary art and sculpture, especially with those not typically familiar with art participation. It enables open access to art, situations and ideas, and continues to re-evaluate and expand the approach to considering art’s role and relevance in society. Supporting 40,000 people each year through YSP’s learning programme, this innovative work develops ability, confidence and life aspiration in participants. YSP’s core work is made possible by investment from Arts Council England, Wakefield Council, Liz and Terry Bramall Foundation and Sakurako and William Fisher through the Sakana Foundation. YSP was named Art Fund Museum of the Year in 2014. SOCIAL MEDIA #YSP / #SeanScully Twitter: @YSPsculpture Instagram: @YSPsculpture MEDIA ENQUIRIES Sophie Steel, Sutton: +44 (0)20 7183 3577 [email protected] Kerry Chase, Yorkshire Sculpture Park: +44 (0)1924 832 515 / [email protected].
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