The suburban themed drawings and assemblages in Grace Culley’s exhibition Closer to Nature, reflect on the boundaries between public and private spaces and gestures.
Each artwork is generated from repeated actions that combine to form a meditative mode of production, which for Culley, is a studio methodology as essential as the visual outcomes it produces. Overall, this process enables her to create work, ease physical impulses and tics, while contributing to the discourse surrounding Gilles de la Tourette’s Syndrome. The resulting labour-intensive artworks in Closer to Nature, are materially potent aestheticisations of thresholds, that poetically employ repetition to absorb and reflect bodily function.
Closer to Nature at Sutton Projects is Culley’s first solo exhibition. A selection of recent group exhibitions include Accumulates in the throat, emerges from the mouth, KINGS Artist-Run, Melbourne, 2021; VCA ART 2020, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, 2020; Indoor Yachting, VCA ARTSPACE, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, 2020; May 2020, DVD Gallery (Online), 2020; The River Doesn’t Want You Today, Living Museum of the West, Melbourne, 2019; Everyone Sins in Venice, VCA ARTSPACE, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne.
In 2020, Culley was a recipient of the Fiona Myer Award from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and will graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) in late 2021.