SEAN SCULLY

The exhibition titled ‘Tapestry’ brings together four distinct bodies of work, each rooted in a deep engagement with the emotional potential of abstraction. It begins with a series of recent pencil-on-paper drawings, intimate in scale and delicately rendered. Alongside these are a number of hand-woven tapestries, produced in collaboration with master craftsmen at Mourne Textiles, where the drawn line is translated into fibre, texture, and weight. These are shown in conversation with new, large-scale paintings from the Stack series — shown here for the first time — these works merge drawing, painting and spray paint to create layered, muscular works that hover between architectural weight and painterly gesture. Completing the exhibition is a selection of new oil-on-copper paintings, smaller and more modest in scale but expansive in rich colour and emotional depth.

The exhibition highlights the way drawing functions as a foundational structure in Sean Scully’s work. Drawing is not treated here as a preliminary stage but as a generative discipline, one that underpins his paintings, informing his use of brush and spray paint, and extends into new textile works. Just as a tapestry is built thread by thread, Scully’s practice is constructed line by line: marks accumulate, interlock, and are layered into larger forms. Whether traced in pencil, painted or woven into undyed wool, drawing persists, intimate and monumental, fragile and enduring.