Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website Sean Scully at Houghton Hall | A major exhibition of outdoor sculpture, paintings & works on paper
february 13, 2023 - Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

Sean Scully at Houghton Hall | A major exhibition of outdoor sculpture, paintings & works on paper

23 April—29 October 2023
Houghton Hall, Norfolk


 An expansive exhibition of sculptures, paintings and works on paper by #seanscully will be presented in the grounds and historic interiors of #houghtonhall in Norfolk, UK, opening this spring and running through to the autumn of 2023.  

 Spanning the full range of his practice, the exhibition represents a major showing of Scully's outdoor sculptures, including several new works. Ranging in scale from small maquettes to monumental open structures in steel, works on view will include Stacks made of sandstone, wood, glass and marble. His sculptures are extensions of his painting practice, constructed by stacking and assembling sensuous materials in a process similar to that with which he builds the rich surfaces of his paintings. Lines, stripes and grids combine colour and material to respond to particular locations, sensations and memories, bringing emotion back into the vocabulary of geometric abstraction. Many of Sean Scully's sculptures are made with recycled or locally sourced materials, including a new Wall of Light constructed from limestone local to #houghtonhall, connecting his work to the surrounding landscape. 

England, as we've seen from the fabulous paintings by Constable, is a country very informed by sky. #people talk about the sky all the time. They talk about the weather, or the clouds, the wet. So, it's a source of inspiration. When you put sculptures outside, you are aware that the sky is illuminating them, and conditioning how they look. Whatever you put out there is always humbled by the bigness of the sky. — Sean Scully

Smaller Than The Sky is curated by art historian and museum director Sean Rainbird, formerly Director of the National Gallery of Ireland (2012–22) and a senior curator at Tate. The title of the exhibition reflects Sean Scully's concern for the environment and his focus on nature, an important aspect of his practice featured in the book Endangered Sky (2023), a recent collaboration with the poet Kelly Grovier. Focusing on the plight of bird life, it memorialises those species already or almost extinct. It will be launched at #houghtonhall and excerpts shown in vitrines as part of the exhibition. 

Smaller Than The Sky follows the installation of major sculptures by the artists at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK in 2019, and critically acclaimed institutional presentations of Scully’s work over the past year, including Sean Scully: Material World at the Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark, which is currently on view until March 2023, and the fifty-year retrospective of the artist's career at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA in 2022.

In the lead up to the opening of Sean Scully's exhibition at #houghtonhall, the permanent installation of the artist's monumental sculpture Landline London 2022 will be unveiled in Hanover Square, London, on 18 April 2023. Standing at over five metres tall and formed from five layers of polished marble in different colours, the single compressed tower reflects the stratified sediments of history and the lived experiences of the diverse #people that the city represents.