Adam Cullen, painter and Archibald Prize winner, was born in Sydney in 1963. He studied Fine Arts and Professional Art Studies at the City Art Institute in Paddington, initially graduating in 1987. Later he returned as a research student when the former CAE joined the He University of New South Wales, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts in 1999.
Despite his apparent conventional academic trajectory, Cullen was initially best known for his confrontational stunts and punkish ploys. In one performance he walked around for a week with a severed pig’s head chained to his ankle, during which time he was banned from public transport. His friend and fellow student, Andrew Frost, saw this as an indication of his long term obsession with decay and death.
Cullen’s most challenging performance piece was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2005. Home Economics consisted of Cullen and fellow artist Cash Brown, standing at a table with various domestic appliances and easily purchased ingredients. Then as Cullen read from sources found on the internet, Brown drew accompanying diagrams to show how weapons of mass destruction could be made by all.
His joy in challenging authority can be seen in his later collaboration with Mark 'Chopper’ Read on a children’s book entitled Hooky the Cripple . Cullen’s work approached difficult social issues with a light touch. Crime, masculinity and cowboy culture, were all exposed through a lens of humour. Formally, his paintings united high and low culture through the combination of bold, gestural brushstrokes and appropriated imagery.
Cullen was the recipient of a number of distinguished prizes most famously the Archibald Prize in 2000 for his portrait of the actor David Wenham. Ice was also a regular finalist in the Archibald, the Sulman and the Blake Prize. In 2002 Cullen represented Australia at the 25th Bienal de Sao Paulo.
For many years he suffered from ill health, which was exacerbated by a life style characterised by drugs and heavy drinking. At the time of his death he was a diabetic, and had his pancreas removed and was heavily medicated, not for pleasure but for survival.
Andrew Frost wrote 'Adam has left us his legacy: the good, the bad and the ugly, the funny, the insightful and glacial glistening of truth, the dancing black line, the splat of curdled enamel on the infinity of a single colour acrylic. It wasn’t conceptual he always said, it was optical. Just look and you will see.’
