Paul Cullen

Paul Cullen (1949–2017) studied various disciplines, all of which informed his artistic practice and methodology. He graduated from the University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Science in 1971, a Diploma of Fine Arts (Hons) in 1975, a Master of Arts in 2000 and a PhD in Fine Arts in 2007. Cullen was a sculptor and installation artist. His celebrated career has seen his work exhibited nationally and internationally and he was the recipient of several awards and residencies including: Mot et Chandon Artist Fellowship, France (1996) and a Senior Fulbright Award at Auburn University, Alabama (2012).

Cullen's career spanned 40 years and he exhibited across Australasia. In the last two decades of his career he pursued exhibition and itinerant projects in numerous international centres including Manchester, London, Halifax, Stockholm, Sydney, Melbourne, Seoul, Chung-Buk, São Paolo, Cheongu, Alabama, Los Angeles, Marfa, Munich and Berlin.

Cullen taught at Manukau Institute of Technology between 1996 and 2008, and from 2008 to 2016 at Auckland University of Technology, where he became an Associate Professor and Head of Department of Visual Arts in 2014.

You can view an extended document of the artist's exhibition history, education, and links to writing about his work here. Links to a Google Doc.

(Image above) Paul Cullen installing a work in the vicinity of Waimakariri River, c. 1974. Photographs by Minerva Betts.

(Image top of the page) Paul Cullen in his studio, Devonport, 1985. Photograph by Minerva Betts.

Selected Exhibition History 

1970s/1980s

Early work exploring links between cultural anthropology, molecular biology, and archetypal architectural forms was shown in Cullen’s first solo exhibition at Christchurch’s The Centre Gallery (1975), and in Building Structures (1979) at Auckland’s Barry Lett Galleries. During the 1970s, Cullen’s installations were also included in important group exhibitions such as Auckland City Art Gallery’s Young Contemporaries (1977), and the Mildura Sculpture Triennial, Victoria, Australia (1978). Three exhibitions in 1983—Table Series (RKS Art, Auckland), Table Series (Disjunctions) (Brooke/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch), and Table Series on Construction (Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch)—presented variations on quasi-architectural maquettes made from model makers’ stripwood or balsa sticks attached to small inclined table tops on skeletal stands. An installation with bricks and wood, continuing Cullen’s interest in simply constructed modular systems, was included in Auckland City Art Gallery’s Aspects of Recent New Zealand Art: Sculpture 1 (1986).

1990s

Cullen’s installations started to feature dismantled and altered everyday objects, including dissected furniture and model globes or planets deployed like props for amateurish and absurdist science experiments. Key exhibitions over this decade included: The Moon/Navigation, Artspace, Auckland, and Explaining the Results of Observation, Centre for Contemporary Art, Hamilton (1991); Gravity/Model for a Hypothetical Space, SoFA Gallery, University of Canterbury, and Incident at Z-152, Botanic Gardens/McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch (1999).

2000s/2010s 

In the last two decades of his career, Cullen pursued exhibitions and itinerant projects in numerous international centres including Manchester, London, Halifax, Stockholm, Sydney, Melbourne, Seoul, Chung-Buk,São Paolo, Cheongju, Alabama, Los Angeles, Marfa (Texas), Munich, and Berlin. His lexicon of objects, materials, and formats continued to expand, incorporating yellow-pencil-infested furniture fragments, roof-top constructed gardens, chairs and tables pinned to ceilings by clusters of long battens, potted cacti and cast-concrete polygons, attenuated surveyors’ levelling staves and range poles, large ink drawings of seventeenth-century French garden motifs, or scientific instruments sprinkled with classificatory letters and numbers. As part of the ongoing Attempts project, the humble single HB pencil was installed at various locations around the world. Four quite different group exhibitions in 2012 placed Cullen’s work in conversation with New Zealand artists: The Obstinate Object: Contemporary New Zealand Sculpture, City Gallery, Wellington; Peripheral Relations: Marcel Duchamp and New Zealand Art 1960–2011, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington; Running on Pebbles: through-lines with incidents and increments, Snake Pit Gallery, Auckland; Made Active: The Chartwell Show, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.