Charlotte Cullen

My practice resonates around forms of care and healing. My sculptures create space for intersecting experiences, including of class, disability, gender, trauma and migration. I draw on my own experience of long-term ill health and, before that, my mum’s experiences over many years of ill health and disability.

This sculpture is jagged and raw, scarred and bent, relating to socially working-classed and gendered forms of labour as well as disability. Marks on the surface are informed by fights for survival including strike action, protests, industrial injury. The sculptures are at once fragile and resilient, torn and robust, connecting deeply with the experiences of disabled workers.

https://charlottecullen.com

https://www.instagram.com/_harlotte_ullen/  

Description:

A metal sculpture, around a metre high. Its basic construction is two flat pieces of metal slotted together which allow it to stand. The lower section is made of woven strips of two different metals.

The metal has been roughly cut and shaped. The upper third of one plane comes to a point from rounded sides, this pointed end marked by large irregular holes. The top part of the other plane is mostly missing, with a jagged piece of metal bent away from it at right angles. Two small tears in the metal have been filled with a piece of blue and a piece of red glass, held in place with leading.

The surface of the sculpture is scratched and gouged. In some cases, the marks left by a juddering tool have a similar appearance to twisted yarn. Others end in arrow points.