Charlotte Cullen
I give
4 March - 29 April 2022
Private View: Thursday 3 March 2022 5-8pm
I give succumbs to the collapsing of boundaries that BLANK_’s significant window space evokes as sculptures subside into 2-dimensional surface only to emerge as structural form woven into the fabric of the building. Surface is interrogated as a barrier and as a marker, etching and gestural mark making create a visual language which evidence lives lived outside of dominant structures of control, informed by etchings on school desks, carved graffiti and witch marks; an inherited act of marking one’s place in history.
There is something visceral about Charlotte Cullen’s work. It is the knots in your stomach, the lingering trace of emotional impact, a tentative salve on still hot wounds. Bitumen and metal are contorted around themselves, each other, precariously existing despite, because of, their scarred surfaces.
Cullen’s past work has incorporated everyday objects into precarious sculptures revealing the cruel optimism of financial hardship and aspirational working-class cultural memory. This show blends past and present. Lingering emotional affect collides with actions that almost appear to still be happening. From this perspective at least, it feels like a work-forever-in-progress.
The past here is evidenced not through written or spoken record but through its undeniable trace embodied within the materials themselves. In a world built for impossible neatness, the artworks’ (and artist’s) existence is an insistent reminder of the ‘failure’ and support of the bent, the broken and the queer.
- Dr Hali Santamas