Tuesday, August 16, 2011

RECENT PRESS - Adam Cullen




Adam Cullen - 'Independent Judiciary (Mother's Milk)' in association with Michael Reid at Elizabeth Bay, curated by Andre de Borde and Jasper Knight

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'Cullen aims for the brutal beauty of ballistics'
Adam Fulton, August 17, 2011



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ADAM CULLEN'S detractors have been trying for years to shoot down his work. Now he has beaten them to it.



For his latest exhibition the maverick artist lined up spray cans and paint tubs on top of a television. Behind them he placed large canvases with crude bull's-eyes. Then he started firing bullets, sending splatters of colour and debris onto the white backdrops.

The ballistic exercise on a rural property near Goulburn was filmed and the footage is being shown in Chalk Horse's spiffy new gallery along with the two lashed canvases, a bullet-riddled smaller panel and a textual reference to the death of his mother a year ago.

"Look at this, mate, this is huge," Cullen says admiringly as he moves a finger around a hole the size of a fist, one of many dotting the canvases.

''This whole thing, I suppose, is some form of lactic exercise in ballistics. So it's sort of lactic ballistics. It's like, if you can imagine, tits as guns. Thus the title,'' he says of Independent Judiciary (Mother's Milk)....



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'Cullen aims for the brutal beauty of ballistics'
Adam Fulton, August 17, 2011



... Yoko Ono and the late William S. Burroughs have used ballistics in art. American artist Chris Burden was once shot in the arm as a deliberate part of an art performance.
But Cullen says no other Australian artist has created paintings with guns.

The exhibition of paintings, titled Independent Judiciary (Mother's Milk), is on view from today at Chalk Horse, where Clementine Blackman is gallery manager.
Cullen, who has delighted in delivering artistic shocks since his student days, is clearly chuffed to be showing at Chalk Horse.In Sydney, Cullen normally shows his work at the upmarket Michael Reid gallery at Elizabeth Bay. But Reid was happy to collaborate with Chalk Horse on this exhibition, since his gallery was too small to house it.
Cullen, who has delighted in delivering artistic shocks since his student days, is clearly chuffed to be showing at Chalk Horse. It shows that, in his mid-40s, his art is still experimental enough for a gallery in touch with its roots as an artist-run space...





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