Output details

‘16.05.08’ (Etching)

’01.10.08’ (Etching)

Brief Description

The two works were selected for the First Alexandria International Biennale for Graphics Arts, and shown at the newly built Bibliotheca Alexandrina. This was a juried exhibition, which drew submissions from 40 countries. Scull’s pieces were subsequently acquired by, and are now part of the permanent Art Collection of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

Research Rationale

The work was informed by the Japanese architectural tradition of houses being conceived as a unity of room and garden, where the distinction between inside and outside is eliminated through the opening of the home (Hayakawa). In the West, however, domestic windows still remain largely vertical and serve to separate interior and exterior spaces. Scull investigates how the exterior can be experienced as something the spectator exists within rather than something outside of themselves.

Strategies Undertaken

The use of shaped canvas – a dominant form of 1960s abstract painting – was a means by which artists moved into real space; a rejection of illusionism. Scull uses this method to suggest an illuminated interior space dominated by but united with ‘sliding door’ shapes filled with a dark exterior space.. In contrast to work from the 1960’s, however, Scull uses the shaped format to allude to space rather than to employ real space. In line with his reference, Scull chose a landscape format for the work. The shapes were configured as two unequally and varied shapes (separated by a thin vertical white space) so as to allude to two different architectural planes that suggested both inside and outside. In addition each work was to be divided, off centre, by a narrow vertical white space as a reference to the use of panels in Japanese art and also to their use as sliding doors.