Charlotte Cullen West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Charlotte Cullen is an artist and lecturer based in Leeds. Cullen's practice acts as a ghost story, as forms translate and mutate across surfaces including metal, glass and paper. Cullen teaches Fine Art at York St John University, curates Vessel gallery, York, and has a studio with serf, Leeds. They are a Sculpture Network 2022 artist with Yorkshire Sculpture International.
Charlotte Cullen is an artist working across and between 2 and 3-dimension. Cullen’s practice employs gestural mark making led by process to capture the moment of impact; the moment in which something is changed, transfigured or damaged. This is primarily explored through steel sculpture wherein practicality leads form to enable the surface to hold passed-down stories and mythologising familial and cultural tales alongside marks informed by graffiti, school desk etchings and other forms of evidencing lived experience for those whose lives exist outside of dominant culture.
Charlotte Cullen’s practice acts as a ghost story, as forms translate and mutate across surfaces including metal, glass and paper. Intaglio prints and embossing capture moments of transition in the sculpting process and seal these marks as reminder and holder of the objects form, to become a haunting reminder. The malleability of metal engages with classed labour through weaving techniques that challenge the histories of sculpted steel, allowing care and intimacy to interlace with the more immediate gestures on the surface. In this, Cullen’s practice forefronts care, and the violence within care and caring.
Cullen has exhibited nationally and internationally and their work is held in private collections across the UK and Europe. They are a member of the Sculpture Network with Yorkshire Sculpture International, 2022 and was selected for Ones to Watch, Sunnybank Mills, 2020. Recent solo exhibitions have included Blank_, Leeds (2022) and Patriothall, Edinburgh (2021); recent commissions include PANIC! bursary supported by The Tetley, Leeds and screened at The Arthouse, Wakefield (2022) and Leeds Central Library (2020-21); recent residencies include LUTRA print workshop, Leeds (2021) and YYT Museum, Shanghai, China with UKNA (2019); group exhibitions have included Gloam, Sheffield (2022), Gallery 32, London (2021-22), Yonder Gallery, Huddersfield as part of HCMF (2021) and Abingdon Studios, Blackpool (2021). Cullen is a researcher and lecturer. They completed their practice-led PhD with the Centre for Sculptural Thinking at the University of Huddersfield in 2019. Cullen is engaged with artist-led exhibition practices and organising, with an interest in how socio-economic and political experience shape the material and formal process of artists practice. They currently curate Vessel gallery with Dr Nathan Walker within York St John University Campus, York. Previously they were panel member of the PANIC! Network, convened by Prof. Griselda Pollock and The Tetley, Leeds, a committee member at serf, Leeds, and curator of UNNAWAY, Huddersfield. Cullen’s solo exhibition Study for a Shield after Battle received a 4-star review in The Morning Star, in which Angus Reid wrote “[Cullen] greets the needs of the present without sentimentality and with clear eyes.”
