60-585: The Pier Arts Centre is an art gallery and museum in Stromness , Orkney, Scotland. It was established in 1979 to provide a home for an important collection of fine art donated to "be held in trust for Orkney" by the author, peace activist and philanthropist Margaret Gardiner (1904–2005). Alongside the permanent collection the Centre curates a year-round programme of changing exhibitions and events. The buildings occupied by The Pier Arts Centre are firmly rooted in
120-555: A uranium mine in the area. The title refers to yellowcake , the powder produced in an early stage of the processing of uranium ore . The Revue was first performed by the composer at the Stromness Hotel on 21 June 1980, as part of the St Magnus Festival ; plans for the uranium mine were cancelled later that year. Stromness is also the title of a 2009 novel by Herbert Wetterauer . Stromness plays host to
180-459: A 6 movement percussion composition performed live outdoors. In 2019 the duo Merzouga released a 46' sound composition "The Language of Light - Music to the Work of Sean Scully" (YLE/DLF 2019) featuring the texts and the voice of Sean Scully. Its premiere broadcast was on 3 December 2019 at 9 pm local time on Finnish broadcaster Yleisradio . German nationwide broadcaster Deutschlandfunk co-produced
240-952: A beach in Mexico, Scully created the first image that would become an extended meditation on architecture and light with the Wall of Light series. In 1989 the Whitechapel Gallery in London held a solo exhibition for Scully, which then travelled to Palacio Velázquez in Madrid and to the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich. These were Scully's first solo exhibitions in mainland Europe. The art critic Robert Hughes' 1989 piece for TIME magazine cemented Scully's increasing reputation. The painting Why and What (Yellow) in 1988
300-531: A centre of innovation. The Collection has grown steadily since 1979 and now contains over 180 works, grouped around the central genre of Modernism, spanning the period from 1929 to the present day. Most recently work by international contemporary artists, including Sean Scully , Eva Rothschild , Martin Boyce , Camilla Løw and Olafur Eliasson , has been acquired. The Pier Arts Centre re-emerged in July 2007 following
360-465: A collector – "I hate being called a collector, for I never set out to collect" – Gardiner gathered together, through friendship and astute patronage, a very personal and important collection of art that closely charts the development of British Modernism. Gardiner's interest in art was deeply influenced by her long friendship with the Hepworth and through this friendship she came into contact with many of
420-766: A colloquium in conjunction with the exhibition Richard Pousette-Dart at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1998. He visited Santo Domingo in 1999, resulting in the photography portfolio Santa Domingo for Nené . That year, Scully's prints were given a retrospective at the Graphische Sammlung Albertina , in Vienna, Austria, and the Musée du Dessin et de l’Estampe Originale in Gravelines . A catalogue raisonné of his prints from 1969 - 1999
480-404: A combination of rigid geometry and expressive texture and colour to larger paintings that year. A prime example of this was Heart of Darkness , inspired by the 1899 novella of the same name . Scully began collaborating with Mohammad O. Khalil in 1983, this was the first time he had collaborated with a printmaker and was the start of a career-long commitment to printmaking . That same year, Scully
540-531: A familiar sight discharging their cargoes at the end of the pier. The herring boom passed and by 1918 all Shearer's schooners were gone – three of them lost at sea; the pier became a quiet backwater. It remained thus until the Second World War, when the upper part of the pier store was requisitioned by the Royal Engineers as a base for planning the many army camps and installations required in
600-1125: A new monumental sculpture in corten-steel, and travelled from the Shanghai Himalayas Museum to the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, to critical acclaim. Another outdoor sculpture Boxes Full of Air was commissioned at Chateau La Coste in France. Scully participated in the Venice Biennale for the first time, in 2015, with the solo exhibition Land Sea at the Palazzo Falier in Venice. The Museum Liaunig, in Neuhaus , Austria, opened its new building expansion with Sean Scully: Painting as an Imaginative World Appropriation . To honour his long-term friendship with art critic Arthur Danto who died in 2013, Scully published
660-408: A new sculpture titled Opulent Ascension under the dome of the late Renaissance church by Andrea Palladio. Arthur Danto wrote that “Sean Scully’s name belongs on the shortest of short lists of the major painters of our time”, continuing that “Scully’s historical importance lies in the way he has brought the great achievement of Abstract Expressionist painting into the contemporary moment - and in
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#1732794032545720-637: A new studio space set on three acres in Tappan, New York, where he continued to extend the Landline series of paintings begun in 2000. That same year, Scully opened fourteen solo exhibitions around the world, including the first major retrospective by a western artist in China. The exhibition, entitled Follow the Heart: The Art of Sean Scully , opened in Beijing. The exhibition included China Piled-Up ,
780-542: A two-year period of construction. The original listed buildings and pier, that had housed the office and stores of the Hudson's Bay Company , have been extended by Reiach & Hall Architects who have created a new building at the harbour's edge. 58°57′47″N 3°17′54″W / 58.9630°N 3.2982°W / 58.9630; -3.2982 Stromness Stromness ( locally / ˈ s t r ʌ m n ɪ s / , Old Norse : Straumnes ; Norn : Stromnes )
840-618: A way overcome the terms of the paragon that sent painting into exile.” Scully has been a member of Aosdána since 2001, and the Royal Academy of Arts since 2013. Scully received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from both Massachusetts College of Art and the National University of Ireland in 2003, and a Doctor of Letters degree from Newcastle University . He received an Honorary Doctorate from Miguel Hernández University in 2006 and 2008. Scully's mother Holly
900-561: A well-to-do family Gardiner studied at Cambridge University before a brief spell as a teacher. She was an early activist against the fascist movement in the 1930s and in the 1960s organised an international press campaign of public figures against the Vietnam War. The author of several books including a biography of Barbara Hepworth she was also associated with some of the major figures in 20th century literature including Louis MacNeice and W. H. Auden . Although never happy to be called
960-487: A working-class part of south London, moving from lodging to lodging for a number of years. By the age of 9, Scully knew he wanted to become an artist, and from the age of 15 until he was 17, Scully was apprenticed at a commercial printing shop in London as a typesetter, an experience that greatly influenced the art to come. From the age of 17 until he turned 20, despite working full-time in various jobs including graphic design, and messenger, Scully attended evening classes at
1020-635: Is bounded on the west by the Atlantic Ocean , on the south and southeast by Hoy Sound, and on the northeast by the Loch of Stenness . Antiquities include Breckness House , erected in 1633 by George Graham , Bishop of Orkney, at the west entrance of Hoy Sound. The Stromness branch of the Orkney Library and Archive is housed in a building given to the library service in 1905 by Marjory Skea Corrigall. Writer George Mackay Brown (1921–1996)
1080-625: Is the second-most populous town in Orkney , Scotland . It is in the southwestern part of Mainland, Orkney . It is a burgh with a parish around the outside with the town of Stromness as its capital. The name "Stromness" comes from the Old Norse Straumnes . Straumr refers to the strong tides that rip past the Point of Ness through Hoy Sound to the south of the town. Nes means "headland". Stromness thus means "headland protruding into
1140-824: The Central School of Art , focused on figurative painting. While working a stint as a plasterer's labourer on the Victoria Station Ballroom, Scully made daily visits to the Tate Milbank to visit Van Gogh's Chair (1888), which made an impression on him. In 1963, at the age of 18, Scully had a job loading trucks with flattened boxes at a cardboard factory. The idea of stacking central to much of his work came from this experience. In September 1965 Sean Scully, age 20, began to study full-time at Croydon College of Art , London, before moving on to Newcastle University in 1968. At Newcastle University,
1200-756: The Chazen Museum of Art opened their new expansion of the museum with a solo exhibition of Scully's eight-part Liliane paintings on aluminum, and other works. Scully opened nine more solo museum exhibitions in 2012, including Notations: Sean Scully at the Philadelphia Museum of Art , as well as exhibitions at museums like MIMA , Kunstmuseum Bern , the Lentos Kunstmuseum in Linz , and IVAM in Valencia, Spain. In 2014, Scully opened
1260-848: The Guangdong Museum and the Hubei Museum in Wuhan. In the same year, as well as solo museum exhibitions in České Budějovice , Czech Republic, and Valencia , Spain, the artist put together two exhibitions of works from specific early periods in his private collection, one of works from the 1970s, in an off-site space in Ridgewood, Queens with Cheim & Read, and another of works from the 1980s with Mnuchin Gallery. Inspired by revisiting his earlier works, Scully began to reemploy techniques such as spray painting, which he first introduced in
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#17327940325451320-565: The Pier Arts Centre , a collection of twentieth-century British art given to the people of Orkney by artists such as Margaret Gardiner . Stromness presents to the Atlantic a range of cliffs between 100 and 500 feet (30 and 150 metres) high, and to Hoy Sound a band of fertile lowlands. The rocks possess great geological interest, and were made well known by the publication of the evangelical geologist Hugh Miller , The Footprints of
1380-843: The Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere , Finland, which travelled to Klassik Stiftung Weimar , in Germany, and the National Gallery of Australia . While in Australia, Scully spent time travelling through the red desert interior. Between 2005 - 2006, Sean Scully's Wall of Light series was displayed at museums around the United States. This began with the exhibition Sean Scully: Wall of Light opened at The Phillips Collection , Washington D.C., and travelled to
1440-536: The 1970s had been to bring the objectives of American Minimalism together with those of Op art , an important current in Europe, creating works using overlays and “supergrids” that bridged these two artistic movements in a new way. Once in New York, Minimalism had a strong influence on his work, and for a few years, Scully's palette was reduced to the grey monochrome ‘Black paintings’ series. Scully began working on
1500-524: The Creator or The Asterolepsis of Stromness (1849). Sean Scully Sean Scully RA (born 30 June 1945) is an Irish-born American-based artist working as a painter, printmaker , sculptor and photographer. His work is held in museum collections worldwide and he has twice been named a Turner Prize nominee. Moving from London to New York in 1975, Scully helped lead the transition from Minimalism to Emotional abstraction in painting, abandoning
1560-594: The Hudson's Bay Company ships en route for Canada was a social highlight in Stromness. In June 1840, Mr and Mrs Clouston entertained for a week a party of ladies travelling to join their husbands in the Hudson's Bay Company. Their daughter, Anne Rose, married Augustus Edward Pelly of Montreal, a relative of John Henry Pelly , governor of the Hudson's Bay Company from 1822 to 1852 and of the Bank of England in 1841–42. In 1872
1620-873: The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Cincinnati Art Museum , and finally the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art to great acclaim. The same year Scully travelled with a group of students from the Art Academy in Munich, to Inisheer , an island off the Irish coast. It was here that the Aran portfolio of photographs were taken. In 2006 the Hugh Lane Gallery opened The Sean Scully Room , a dedicated, permanent installation of
1680-675: The Rowan Gallery in London, sold out. During this period Scully taught at the Chelsea College of Art and Design , and Goldsmith's, while continuing to paint in his Elephant Lane studio in Rotherhithe . In 1975, at the age of 30, Scully was awarded a two-year Harkness Fellowship with which he moved to New York. Once in New York, he began to develop important friendships with fellow artists such as Robert Ryman , and others in academic and artistic circles. Scully's response in
1740-966: The Sensual Concealed: The Imagery of Sean Scully opened in 2009 at the MKM Museum Küppersmühlefür Moderne Kunst, in Duisburg, Germany, and travelled to the Ulster Museum, Belfast. In 2010 a tour of important early works from the 1980s started at the Centre for Contemporary Arts , Carlow, Ireland, and then travelled to the Leeds Art Gallery , and the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen am Rhein. In 2011
1800-615: The Stromness area, served as traders, explorers and seamen for both. Captain Cook 's ships, Discovery and Resolution , called at the town in 1780 on their return voyage from the Hawaiian Islands , where Captain Cook had been killed. Stromness Museum reflects these aspects of the town's history (displaying for example important collections of whaling relics, and Inuit artefacts brought back as souvenirs by local men from Greenland and Arctic Canada ). Stromness harbour
1860-722: The University Theatre's production of Samuel Beckett ’s Waiting for Godot made a lasting impact on him. Scully was also influenced by a trip to Morocco in 1969, where he became fascinated by the multi-colored stripes locals wove into wool tents and robes. Scully was awarded the Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship in 1972 to attend Harvard University. It was during this first stay in the US that Scully began to experiment with new techniques such as tape and spray paint. Scully's first commercial show, at
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1920-521: The ability to make relationships, to be metaphorical and referential, spiritual, poetic, all those things and aspects of human nature—had to be put back in if painting was to go forward.” In 1981 the first retrospective of Sean Scully's work was held at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham . This was also the year that Scully's confidence to withdraw from adherence to Minimalism became apparent, with
1980-469: The area. Later the upper floor was used as a dwelling. Between 1965 and 1971 the property was split between three owners. The main dwelling and part of the pier building became a private lodging house and hostel. In 1977 The Pier Arts Centre Trust purchased the original dwelling and the pier store. Margaret Gardiner had first visited Orkney in the 1950s and converted the old quayside building to house her collection of modern paintings and sculpture. Born into
2040-853: The artist's work, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France held an exhibition of his prints. Sean Scully: A Retrospective opened in 2007 at the Fundació Joan Miró , Barcelona, and travelled to the Musée d'art moderne (Saint-Étienne) , and the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma (MACRO) in Rome. The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. invited Scully to give the Elson Lecture in 2007. The retrospective exhibition Constantinople or
2100-459: The book Danto on Scully, bringing together the series of five essays Danto had written on the artist over the previous 20 years. In 2015 Scully completed his restoration of the 10th Church of Santa Cecília de Montserrat in Spain, and opened it to the public. Commissioned by the Museum of Montserrat to make a holistic artistic intervention in the sacred space, Scully not only permanently installed paintings but worked on site-specific frescoes, and
2160-404: The design of the altar and cross. The chapel is now both a working church, and also the Espai d’Art Sean Scully . Scully was awarded the V Congreso Asociacion Protecturi for his contribution to Spanish religious heritage In 2016 Scully's second major exhibition in China, Sean Scully: Resistance and Persistence , opened at the Art Museum of the Nanjing University of the Arts , and travelled to
2220-412: The dominant trend of the time tending towards Postmodernism . Scully's paintings from this period are heavy and physical in terms of both size and aesthetic, and make use of large-scale stretchers. By 1987, Scully's work became less complex, flatter and smaller in scale, and began to include lighter color palettes beginning with Pale Fire in 1988. The same year, while experimenting with watercolours on
2280-451: The exhibition Sean Scully: Sea Star opened at The National Gallery, London , showcasing Scully's work alongside works by J. M. W. Turner . On 6 April 2019, director Nick Willing 's documentary film Unstoppable. Sean Scully & The Art of Everything aired nationally in the UK on BBC Two . For the 58th Venice Biennale , Scully presented Sean Scully: Human at the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore , an exhibition of recent paintings and
2340-414: The first exhibition of The Catherine Paintings , at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth , Texas. In 1994 he opened a second studio in Barcelona , and he returned to Morocco in 1995, to spend more time in the country. Atlas Walls is a portfolio of Scully's photographic works taken during this trip. In 1995 Scully returned to New York, moving into a large new studio in Chelsea, Manhattan . Chelsea Wall
2400-447: The history of Orkney. The house fronting the street was built in the 18th century, and during much of the 19th century was occupied by Edward Clouston, a prosperous merchant and Agent of the Hudson's Bay Company . On the pier behind the house, Clouston erected stores and offices. On the first floor of his house, he had a finely panelled drawing room, furnished with books, family portraits, and a pianoforte. The arrival early each summer of
2460-714: The island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas and the feminine Greek adjective ἐλεύθερος ( eleútheros ), meaning "free". 2018 saw Scully have a total of fourteen public exhibitions around the world. This included the installation of the monumental sculpture Boxes of Air in the Cuadra San Cristóbal, in Mexico City, along with paintings installed in the horse stalls of the iconic pink stable block. Other museum shows included: Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow ; Hatton and Laing Galleries, Newcastle, UK; De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art , Tilburg, Netherlands; Russian Museum , St Petersburg, Russia; Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe , Germany; Yorkshire Sculpture Park , UK, among many others. In 2019,
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2520-401: The late 1960s. Over the course of 2015–2017, Scully's work expanded in two particular directions: sculpture and figuration. During this period, Scully began working on sculptural projects, including the Tower series using various materials such as corten steel , marble, and stainless steel, and the Stack series in both raw and painted steel were introduced. A new series of Block paintings
2580-449: The logjam of American minimalist painting”. In 1982 Scully began to work with the gallerist David McKee, an important relationship that lasted for a decade. During the summer of that year, Scully started producing small multi-panel works on found pieces of wood while staying in Montauk at the Edward Albee artist's colony. These works were titled Ridge , Plum , and Bear after the islands that surround Long Island. He also began applying
2640-440: The movement of Minimalism in New York and wanted to bring more human elements into his art. He made multiple trips to Morocco and Mexico during this time, as he considered these trips to have “a direct bearing on what I think art should be doing – which is concentrating on what’s interesting, engaging, perverse, and beautiful about human nature.” He later commented that “I had decided that what had been stripped out of painting—i.e.,
2700-409: The north coast of mainland Scotland . First recorded as the site of an inn in the sixteenth century, Stromness became important during the late seventeenth century, when Great Britain was at war with France and shipping was forced to avoid the English Channel . Ships of the Hudson's Bay Company were regular visitors, as were whaling fleets. Large numbers of Orkneymen , many of whom came from
2760-446: The piece, the German broadcast was scheduled for February 2020 Scully first began writing about art and his own work in the 1980s, although he only truly began to include writing as part of his practice from 1996 onwards. 2016 saw the publication of Inner: the collected writings and selected interviews of Sean Scully , by HatjeCantz Scully became a father at the age of 19, with the birth of his son Paul on 7 May 1965. Paul later died in
2820-518: The premises came into the possession of John Aim Shearer, whose general merchant's business was to last nearly 100 years. In the late 19th century, Stromness was a flourishing centre of the herring fishing. J. A. Shearer erected a shop across the street from his house and established a cooperage on the pier. At this time, most trade with the east coast of Scotland was carried on by local trading vessels and Shearer's schooners, Maggie, Janet, Mary Ann and Minnie , three of them named after his daughters, were
2880-573: The principal figures in 20th century British art, including Hepworth's second husband, Ben Nicholson . Throughout the 1930s and 40s Gardiner was a key supporter of the small group of artists who sought sanctuary in St Ives and she was also an early champion of the Cornish painter and seaman Alfred Wallis . Following the Second World War she encountered and encouraged a new generation of artists, including Peter Lanyon , Patrick Heron , Terry Frost , Margaret Mellis , John Wells and Roger Hilton , that had been drawn to St Ives by its growing reputation as
2940-432: The reduced vocabulary of Minimalism in favour of a return to metaphor and spirituality in art. Scully has also been a lecturer and professor at a number of universities and his writing and teachings are collected in the 2016 book, Inner: The Collected Writings and Selected Interviews of Sean Scully. Sean Scully was born in Dublin , Ireland, on 30 June 1945. Four years later his family moved to London where they lived in
3000-416: The return of color and space, and the freehand drawing of stripes and visible brushstrokes, rather than the hard lines of tape. Scully had a breakthrough with the seminal 1981 painting Backs and Fronts , which had a profound impact in the 1982 exhibition 'Critical Perspectives' at the PS1 Contemporary Art Center . This was a watershed painting which British conceptual artist Gillian Wearing has said “broke
3060-434: The series known as The Catherine Paintings in 1979, while sharing his Duane Street studio with his third wife, the artist Catherine Lee . The idea behind the series was to choose the important painting Scully produced during each year together, that would then become part of a collection named after her. This was the beginning of Sean's own private collection of his work. By 1980 Scully considered himself to be at war with
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#17327940325453120-418: The tidal stream". In Viking times the anchorage where Stromness now stands was called Hamnavoe. A long-established seaport, Stromness has a population of approximately 2,500 residents. The old town is clustered along the characterful and winding main street, flanked by houses and shops built from local stone, with narrow lanes and alleys branching off it. There is a ferry link from Stromness to Scrabster on
3180-493: Was a Vaudeville singer, and Sean Scully became heavily influenced by rhythm and blues in his adolescence. Scully owned and ran an R&B Club as a teenager in South London, and was briefly in an R&B band with his brother and a friend. In 2016 the percussionist Billy Martin from the band Medeski Martin & Wood made a performative collaboration with Sean Scully's monumental corten steel sculpture Boxes of Air at Scully's Tappan studio. It culminated in ‘Boxing for Sean’,
3240-457: Was also published. In 2001, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth acquired the complete Catherine series, eighteen paintings that each represent a year from the period 1979–1996, which was given a dedicated room for permanent exhibition in the new Museum building opened in 2002. In 2002 Scully was appointed Professor of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich , a position he held through to 2007. A retrospective exhibition opened in 2004 at
3300-432: Was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts. In 1984, the Museum of Modern Art included Scully in their International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture. The following year Scully's first American solo museum exhibition was held at the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute in 1985, and traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston . Other major museums also began to acquire Scully's large-scale paintings, despite
3360-413: Was begun, in which Scully self-referenced his sculpture in paint. This new direction was the focus of the solo exhibition Wall of Light Cubed at Cheim & Read, NY. Scully also revisited his early exploration in figuration from the late 1960s in a series of figurative paintings titled Eleuthera which was completed between 2015 and 2017. The series was inspired by Scully's son Oisin, and was named after
3420-439: Was born and lived most of his life in the town, and is buried in the town's cemetery overlooking Hoy Sound. His poem " Hamnavoe " is set in the town, and is in part a memorial to his father John, a local postman. Stromness is also named in the title of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies 's popular piano piece "Farewell to Stromness", a piano interlude from The Yellow Cake Revue , which was written in 1980 to protest against plans to open
3480-513: Was rebuilt to the designs of John Barron in 1893. At Stromness Pierhead is a statue by North Ronaldsay sculptor Ian Scott, depicting John Rae standing erect with an inscription describing him as "the discoverer of the final link in the first navigable Northwest Passage", which was unveiled in 2013. The parish of Stromness includes the islands of Hoy and Graemsay in addition to a tract of land about 5 by 3 + 3 ⁄ 4 miles (8.0 by 6.0 kilometres) on Mainland, Orkney . The Mainland part
3540-429: Was the first painting to be made there. Scully received a number of invitations to speak at academic institutions, and participated in the Joseph Beuys lectures on the state of contemporary art in Britain, Europe and the US, held by the Ruskin School at Oxford University, England. In 1997, Scully's photography was exhibited for the first time at the Sala de Exposiciones Rekalde in Bilbao, Spain. Scully participated in
3600-518: Was the first to incorporate an inset element of steel. By 1991 Scully expanded the use of steel, setting oil on linen insets into large steel panels. He also began the regular use of a checkerboard motif at this time, first hinted at in his Taped and Hidden Drawing paintings of the mid-1970s. In 1992, while teaching at Harvard University, Sean Scully revisited Morocco to film the BBC documentary The Artist's Journey: Sean Scully on Henri Matisse , with Matisse having visited Morocco in 1912 - 1913. 1993 saw
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