IOver the past decade, the University of Limerick has been steadily building up a distinguished sculpture collection, but the unveiling of Sean Scully’s Crann Soilse on 14 October 2003, marks a shift upwards in scale and ambition. This is the first sculpture made by Scully. Composed of hand-split cubes of stone, it takes the form of a wall, standing on a long earthen mound. The stones, alternately of cream limestone and black basalt, each measure 2’6” cubed. They are stacked in horizontal courses, three cubes wide by four high and forty long, forming a chequerboard pattern. Most of the stones are rough-faced, although one section, near the centre, is polished smooth. The total weight of the sculpture is estimated at over 3,600 tons. Assembled without cement or mortar, Crann Soilse – the artist translates it as ‘Wall of Light’ – clearly references prehistoric structures such as the Mayan temples of Mexico, or Dun Aengus on the Aran Islands. Like much of Scully’s work, Crann Soilse is about weight, and lightness. It appears to float on its mound of grass, particularly at night when floodlit, but on closer viewing its great mass and weight become apparent. It is the key element in an architectural ensemble, designed by architects Shane de Blacam and John Meagher, which includes a yew hedge and two tall wooden masts. Set at a slight angle to the road that passes in front of the Plassey campus, the sculpture serves as a distinctive and unusual entrance marker to the University of Limerick.

Crann Soilse adheres to a fundamental dictum of Modernism in that ‘it is what it is’, and does not pretend to be something else. Perhaps its most important feature is that it is not just a façade of stone, fastened to a reinforced concrete core – instead, stones are used throughout, the chequerboard pattern extending through the length and breadth of the work. This inner core of stone, laid with the same care, attention and regularity as the visible outer layer of stones, is totally hidden. An important intention of the artist was to create an object that he describes as the ‘opposite of fake’. In doing so he evokes the aesthetic theories of John Ruskin, who also abhorred the use of stone veneers or fake marbling. Scully’s similar repudiation of the fascia or veneer involved 480 stones being quarried, hand-split into cubes and shipped from China and Portugal to Ireland. De Blacam visited the quarry in China where black basalt blocks were cut and hand-split into cubes for shipment to Ireland; he also visited Portugal where white Moleanos limestone blocks were prepared in the same way. Scully’s initial impulse had been to source the light and dark stones in Ireland, but cost and time factors made this impossible. However, the second option, combining stones sourced in Portugal and China, has introduced unexpected resonances into the work. Like the ancient monuments that inspired its creation, Crann Soilse has a sense of universality, perhaps enhanced through its being made of stones that have been cut from one part of the world and transported and placed in a new setting.

Another intention of the artist was to create from the most solid and elemental of materials, an object which would have a mystical quality. While Crann Soilse looks solid and workmanlike, it also possesses an otherworldly, ethereal quality. Scully refers to the walls of Mayan temples as ‘silent, austere yet emotional’. He refers also to the ‘mysticism of the horizon line’, both phrases which could well be used in describing the aesthetic impact of the Limerick sculpture.
Born in Dublin, Scully was raised in London, where he trained as an artist. In 1975 he moved to New York where he established himself as perhaps the leading exponent of abstraction. During a period when painting in the grand manner was considered to be on the wane, Scully remained committed to the central tenets of Abstract Expressionsim. In contrast to Francis Bacon who lived in London and repudiated his Irish background, Scully, who maintains studios in New York, Barcelona and London, asserts his Irish roots with confidence, while remaining wary of nationalism. In line with this, the inspirations he finds in Ireland have a timeless quality: dry-stone walls on the Aran Islands, chequered patterns in medieval Irish manuscripts, GAA county flags, and the linear repetitive rhythms of Irish music. An important consideration for the artist, by his own admission, was to create a work relating to pre-colonial Ireland, to recreate what he describes as the ‘severity’ of the black and white patterned borders in the Book of Durrow.

The references to Irish culture in Scully’s art extend to the literary, in paintings with titles such as Come In and Murphy, both homages to Samuel Beckett. The title Come In was inspired by an incident when James Joyce was dictating to the young Samuel Beckett. In the middle of his soliloquy there was a knock on the door. Joyce said ‘Come in’, and Beckett duly wrote this down. The following day, when Beckett was reading back to Joyce his words of the previous day, Joyce was surprised to hear ‘Come in’ suddenly inserted into the text, but on reflection he decided to leave it in. As well as the painting Come In being a conscious homage to Sam Beckett, it is also a testament to the importance to Scully of the notion of an intervention, something interpolated, things coming in from the side. Many of Scully’s paintings contain such interventions. As with his painting Africa, they often take the form of a ‘window’ inserted into the ‘wall’ of the painting. Windows are a common motif in Romantic art, but Scully, while acknowledging this, stresses that the Romantic impulse must be put into a critical dialogue with the geometric ‘Otherwise you don’t respect the Romantic and the Poetic – it becomes sentimental.’ The ‘window’ in Africa is light and delicate, as compared to what he terms the ‘deep surface’ of painting, built up of many layers of paint. The sculpture at Limerick University contains an intervention too, where polished stones have been used to create an area of light reflective stone, in the midst of the rough cut stones, towards one end of the sculpture.

Other recurring references in Scully’s art are to mirrors and doors. What happens around the edges of his works is also as important as what happens at the centre. All of these are used, either individually or together, to give a sense of internal movement to the works. Also, in most of his works, something is placed in correspondence with something else. In the case of Crann Soilse this can be seen in the contrast between light and dark, smooth and polished. The mirroring, or reflection, that appears in many of his painting, where elements appear to both join and separate, each side questioning the other, is used to suggest a search for identity, as in the myth of Narcissus. He describes the painting Union, a recent work, as being about sameness, and mirroring, in contrast to earlier paintings which incorporated ‘ruptures’ where the plane of the painting was discontinuous, or fractured. The artist has always been fascinated by the simple mechanism of doors, leading from one space, or one reality, to another. Inserts, or interventions are a constant feature in his art. He describes an intervention as ‘a smudge’. In Crann Soilse the insert is the area of polished stones towards one end of the sculpture. ‘It’s the same material, but reconsidered. The insert is a problem, an intimacy’. In his paintings, this was achieved by contrasting a ‘deep surface’ painted many times, with a shallow surface, painted thinly.

With a characteristic mixture of assertiveness and humorous self-deprecation Scully describes Crann Soilse as a ‘leap into the emotional, the spiritual, and the ridiculous.’ His sense of humour is akin to the humour of Buddhist monks, who while setting themselves some painstaking or arduous task, also gently chides themselves for their human failings. ‘If you’re not taking some risks as an artist says Scully, ‘you might as well be at home watching Eastenders’. He pays homage to artistic inspiration of the sculptor Alberto Giacometti, whose slender attenuated figures he describes as ‘ragged sentinels facing time and all the elements of human history’ and Georgio Morandi, whose still-lifes have a classic eternal quality. Like these artists, Scully describes himself as obsessive, rather than experimental.
‘I started out as a figurative painter and a drawer of figures in space. I still am. I’ve been influenced by mysticism of the East, of Islam, but also the northern mysticism of Finland. The art I make is an emotional geometric art – where geometry is not just used in a Western ordering of the world but also for emotional results. Curators and critics who expect the paintings to have a rationality are often disappointed. A curator once said I was perverse, that I was mis-using the tradition of geometric abstraction. He felt that in its origins, with the Russian Suprematists, it was meant to represent order. But what I want to do is set the utter severity of drawing against the romance of painting.’ Scully characterises colours in terms such as sour and sweet, using colours to suggest these emotions. ‘I use colour in both a simple and a complicated way. When I use a red, I want it to suggest blood and roses. When I use dark and light colours, there is a sense in which they represent good and evil. But then I will use dull colours, to convey a sense of sadness. In the painting Four Large Mirrors for instance, all the browns are different’.

The philosopher Jürgen Habermas, writing about Scully’s work, said that one of the great advantages of abstract art is that, like people, it never really explains itself. Like human beings, abstraction is not meant to be understood. It retains an inner mystery. Scully agrees: ‘The mystery has been taken out of everything. People have a need to understand, but they also have a need for mystery. Do you get tired of seeing autumn leaves fall? Or watching the ocean? I don’t pretend to be inventive but I hope with Crann Soilse that I have created something that has some of these qualities’.

Vivienne Roche shares with Sean Scully a commitment to abstraction combined with a lively eye for detail and texture. Like Scully, her works are often inspired by everyday details. She searches for significance and meaning in the overlooked. Commissioned by Fingal County Council for the council chamber in their new headquarters in Swords, Roche’s new sculpture Flow is designed to evoke the beaches and estuaries that define the coastline north of Dublin City. The sculpture is, in essence, a life-size representation, in glass and plaster and bronze, of a stream crossing a sandy beach. However in its realisation, with the interplay of solid and translucent materials reflecting and absorbing the shifting daylight, the artist has achieved something extraordinary. In a literal sense, stream and beach have been turned through ninety degrees and set into a curving wall, extending over twenty linear metres. In its ambition and scale, Flow is comparable to Crann Soilse, although its translation of nature is more literal and descriptive. The translucent glass, moulded in sections, has ripples on the surface that directly reference flowing water. The bronze elements separating glass and plaster undulate like fronds of seaweed. However this work steps beyond the stated intentions of the artist – to create an abstract work that would echo the form and substance of sand and water - and becomes a symphonic evocation of the animating forces of nature.

Roche has much experience of working on large-scale public sculptures. Born in Cork, she studied sculpture at the Crawford College of Art and Design from 1970 to 1974 and afterwards at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In 1989, she was a founder of the National Sculpture Factory. In addition to carrying out commissions for Sneem in Co. Kerry, and University College Cork, her public sculptures can be seen at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin and the Dental Hospital at Trinity College. In 1994 she was commissioned to create Sea Garden at the ferry terminal at Ringaskiddy in Co. Cork. Roche’s work has been included in many exhibitions, including Edge to Edge which toured Scandinavia in 1990-91 and Tidal Erotics, a collaborative work with composer John Buckley, shown at the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane and at the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh in 1999. At Expo 2000 in Hamburg, The Amen of Calm Waters was shown in the Irish pavilion. While Roche’s early sculptures, such as Wave in Cork, were mainly in welded steel, her sculptures from the early 1990s have been more often cast in bronze, reflecting the development of a personal idiom and language of form, deriving partly from her travels in Scandinavia. In more recent years, references to seaweed, sand and water have predominated. The sculpture in Fingal County Council headquarters is actually modelled on a stream at Garretstown Strand in Co. Cork, close to the home of the artist. Flow was realised with assistance from the glass studio of Salah and Francis Kawala, and stuccodores Smith and Henderson.

The new headquarters for Fingal County Council were designed by architects Karen McEvoy and Merritt Bucholz. At the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2002, they showed drawings and full-scale elements for their next major project, a new office building for Limerick County Council, which has now been completed. The quality of the commissioned artworks at Fingal is echoed in the Limerick offices. Inside the high atrium a sculpture by Corban Walker, Water Falling, plays with scale, the history of 20th-century sculpture, and the perennial desire for ‘water features’ in office buildings. At first sight a low-key work constructed within the Minimalist tradition, on closer reading Walker’s sculpture turns out to be a humorous but pointed commentary on the untrammelled growth and inflationary policies which have catapulted Ireland, from a relatively poor country, into the ranks of one of the most expensive countries in the world. Composed of a vertical series of metal trays jutting out from the wall, Walker’s sculpture is clearly a homage to Donald Judd, but unlike Judd’s rational and sober Minimalism, Walker’s trays go up and up to the top of the atrium, reaching an absurd height. The water element of the sculpture is more elusive. Each tray slowly fills with water before emptying into the tray below. Small square two-way mirrors are set into the front of the trays, which allows the viewer to see the height of the water within. The water takes six hours to get from the top to the bottom tray. The number of trays, forty-four, is in keeping with Walker’s other sculptures, where he uses his own height, four feet, as a ‘bench-mark’.

Most of Corban Walker’s sculptures deal with issues of height and accessibility, played out within the context of Modernist idealism. His most recent exhibition, at the Green on Red Gallery in Dublin revealed the artist’s sense of Utopian ideals turned slightly on their heads. The audience had to stoop slightly to see within his two-way mirror glass, plain glass, models which recalled buildings such as the Farnsworth House or the Barcelona Pavilion. His Mapping 4 exhibition at Pace Wildenstein in New York in 2000 worked with the space and the physical limits of the gallery, while Ocular Field Two, a line of tall metal poles shown at the Confort Moderne in Poitiers some years previously, viewers had to stoop to view the work. Four inches wide, from top of column to bottom. Other works by Walker include Blip outside the Civic Centre in Clondalkin, and a similar work on the rooftop of No. 1 Castle Street, near Dublin Castle.

Walker transgresses the logic and rationality of Modernism, holding it up to a gentle mocking. In a previous piece, incorporated into the staircase of the new wing of the Crawford Gallery in Cork, Walker also brought the spirit of le Corbusier to task, pointing out, with wit and elegance, that there is no such thing as a modular man, or woman. And whereas Scully sets out to reclaim for humanity a sense of mystery rescued from the grids of Modernism, Walker, a la Chaplin or Jacques Tati, reclaims a sense of dignity for the extraordinary diversity of the human race. For Walker, the Utopianism of le Corbusier, van der Rohe or Judd is not a lost cause, just one that needs to be adapted to the special needs of people who actually have to live in the world. In terms of their quality and the complexities of their readings, these three new works, by Scully, Roche and Walker, set a new standard for contemporary public sculpture in Ireland.

Peter Murray is the Curator of the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery Cork
The quotations by Scully are taken from a lecture given by the artist at the University of Limerick on 14 Oct 2003, and in conversation with the author.