Concrete Playground

The imagination of Adam Cullen is a weird and wonderful place. Grotesquely Pop-tastic, this mini retrospective of work resembles a circus of demented figures cast from wild brush strokes and bold lashings of paint splattered across the canvas.

Cullen lures his audience into a rainbow coloured nightmare, where buxom honey bees skulk away from the fleshy leftovers of a mysterious science experiment. Here, crazy-eyed garden gnomes stare provocatively at the viewer in a pre- (or post?) coital fling with a monkey. A Henry Rollins-esque figure howls to the sky, possibly singing (probably screeching) while in the background, a limbless bleeding torso scales the wall.

Cullen is an artist unafraid of the controversial and the dangerous. He baited infamy in his art school days by dragging a rotting pig’s head around chained to his ankle. He later collaborated with Mark ‘Chopper’ Read on a children’s book. He then caught the art world off guard when as an established ‘grunge artist’ he took home the coveted Archibald Prize in 2000 with a portrait of David Wenham. Clearly, Cullen is not a man who responds well to being pigeonholed.

Image: Adam Cullen, K-mart Hillbillies, 2005.