Aran 2005

Curator: Sean Scully's photograph, "Aran," captured in 2005, presents a stark, compelling vision. It's essentially a portrait of a stone wall. What’s your immediate take? Editor: Rough, austere. I see the physicality, the sheer labor implied in building something so monumental with such unforgiving material. It speaks of permanence, but also of relentless human effort against a landscape that resists cultivation. Curator: It’s fascinating how Scully transforms such an ordinary subject. Dry stone walls like this are incredibly common in places like Ireland and Scotland, markers of land ownership and agricultural practice, yet here, isolated and presented in grayscale, the wall becomes something more, doesn't it? Something more abstract, less practical. Editor: Absolutely. The black and white removes any sense of warmth, emphasizing texture and the stark contrast between light and shadow. Each stone has its own character; you can practically feel its weight. Think about the hands that selected and placed each one. What was the availability of material like in this location, what kind of effort to acquire the resource? Curator: Indeed. Scully has long been interested in the grid and the way it structures space. I can't help but think about his abstract paintings and how that formal interest in arrangement and division translates to the real world. It underscores a relationship between painting and sculpture and how both practices relate to place, tradition, and history. Editor: For me, the image resonates beyond art history and touches on issues of land rights and the agricultural labor needed for survival in those regions. You have to ask what those boundaries demarcate and how did the tradition of their making start, which would involve considering access to materials and geological and ecological history of that region. Curator: It's a very powerful image precisely because it invites these multiple readings. It's about formal arrangements, yes, but also about the lives lived in and around these constructed spaces. The fact that Scully has moved from geometric abstraction to include the real subject of the landscape adds new possibilities of reception to his entire practice. Editor: Exactly. The sheer physicality preserved in the photograph encourages one to consider how the material world informs not just art but also economic relations between a society and the environment. The arrangement of material carries just as much value as its surface and is important to highlight in Sean Scully’s ‘Aran.’