Artist couple Liliane Tomasko and Sean Scully will present their practices side by side at Newlands House Gallery, West Sussex, for the first time in the UK. Tomasko’s expressive, brightly coloured abstractions and Scully’s black square paintings, glass sculpture and his return to figurative painting will open from 24 July to 10 October 2021.
Both Liliane Tomasko and Sean Scully deal with Abstraction through distinctly different approaches, despite sharing living spaces and family life together. Scully draws on his personal biography to inform his art; Tomasko focuses on the universal experience of the domestic, presenting an emotional journey of light and pigment.
For more than 20 years, the Swiss-born Tomasko (1967) has focused on everyday domestic scenes from her life, a figurative starting point that becomes increasingly abstracted. This exhibition is an ongoing body of painting that explores themes of sleep, dreams and the unconscious. Tomasko starts by capturing moments with polaroid photography, then transcribes them into drawing, followed by painting that is dynamic in its Abstraction. Each step erases interpretable details, losing its connection to the original source – like a process of Chinese whispers. Tomasko’s final works are motivated by intuition and spontaneity, creating large gestural paintings on paper and canvas.
Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1945 and now living between New York and Germany, Scully is considered to be one of the most important abstract painters working today. Drawing on European traditions, Scully is credited with reinvigorating abstract painting. On view for the first time in the UK are Scully’s most recent works, including his Black Square series (2020) and Madonna paintings (2018) that came out of a recent return to figuration. Also on view will be three sculptures by the artist. Over the past two decades, Scully has revisited his sculptural practice, working predominantly in steel and stone to create powerful structures that assert their materiality. This exhibition will be the first opportunity to see Scully’s sculpture in Murano glass in the UK, affirming his prodigious artistic range.
Presented in the historic market town of Petworth, in Newlands House Gallery’s Georgian building, the exhibition offers residents and summer visitors alike an opportunity to intimately engage with 42 works of art, including six paintings on paper, three sculptures and one video work. The exhibition runs from 24 July to 10 October 2021.
Coinciding with the exhibition, Thames & Hudson will publish On the Line: Conversations with Sean Scully, a collection of conversations between Sean Scully and art critic Kelly Grovier on 16 September 2021.
Top Image: Left image: Liliane Tomasko, Hung out to Dry, 2016. Courtesy of the artist. Right image: Sean Scully, Black Square Night, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
Newlands House Gallery presents From The Real: Liliane Tomasko and Sean Scully 24 July to 10 October 2021