Art on the edge

The modernists, we are discovering, are not the only artists who have come under great scrutiny, discussion and dissension on the Melbourne art scene. 

Another is the grunge artist, Adam Cullen. One day we were taken to lunch at the HuTong Duck and Dumpling bar in Prahran where the food was divine, delicious morsels of split eggplant and prawns in hoisin, and all sorts of dumplings filled with anything from crab to crispy duck. But, even more interesting, the food bar is situated on the ground floor of The Cullen, a boutique hotel named for Adam Cullen’s edgy art pieces, which the hotel group bought and displays on every wall, in every suite. Somewhat like a patron.

Adam Cullen grew up in an apparently stable home and studied art, formally, and at length. From early on he stood out, turning up at art school with a rotting head of a dead pig chained to his ankle. Clearly wanting to stand out. 

His life and his art became even more lurid, more exposed. Diagnosed bipolar, his behaviour became as extreme as his drinking and drug taking. Guns were his passion, shooting at things, anything. He even shot the leg of the man he’d invited to write his biography. He incorporated gun violence into many of his works and many of his creations drip paint-blood.

To start the day Cullen needed a bottle of vodka to fuel the violent apparitions he plastered over his canvas: mongrel dogs, the hair on their backs set brutally afire; human faces, their eyes slashed out, dripping from the eye cavities. Rabid animals, fangs exposed, drooling blood. Or decapitated. All against brightly splashed backgrounds of acid yellow, neon orange, lurid pink and shard green exaggerating the violence of his subject matter. Standing out.

The most peaceful work we have seen is his yellow tinged head of the actor, David Wenham, which calls to mind one of Van Gogh’s self portraits in its mood, its brush strokes, its style. For this, Cullen won the Archibald Prize.

A driven man. His subject matter so often violent and difficult to comprehend, is stark and visually stunning in its simplicity, for with just a few simple almost caricature-like lines, he can portray a canvas overflowing with a violent warped rage.

Watching his paint splatter over his canvas is like watching Van Gogh in the agony of his dark days, painting swirling skies that are starry no more: the subject matter growing grimmer, darker, more dangerous and edgy the closer the end came. 

And the end came for Adam Cullen quite young. He was just forty seven when he was found dead. And, like Van Gogh, his work will likely sell stratospherically.