Title
Residual paroxysm of unspoken and extended closures interrogated by a malady of necrogenic subterfuge with a nice exit
1993
2008
Artist
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Details
- Dates
- 1993
2008 - Media category
- Installation
- Materials used
- television, air-conditioning filters, rubber, fiberglass bath, disposable nappies, various adhesives, glass-filament adhesive tape, pharmaceutical apparatus, wood, plastic/paper, sheeting, timber, varnish, mucus, ink
- Dimensions
- 75.0 x 600.0 x 700.0 cm
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Gift of the artist 2008
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 328.2008.a-h
- Copyright
- © Estate of Adam Cullen/Copyright Agency
- Artist information
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Adam Cullen
Works in the collection
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About
“As an object ‘Residual paroxysm…’ recalls bodgie hospital apparatus, some sort of amateur scientific experiment, or even a home-made distillery. The components, resembling an injecting apparatus and its circulatory tubes and elements, suggest a narcotics culture made manifest. The TV is the broken animus of the circuitry/circulation system, a key to the implied exchange of fluids through the plastic tubing and matter oozing around the work. Curator and academic Edward Colless described this sculpture as both ‘criminal and aberrant’ and went on to discuss it in highly sexualized terms as a failed reproductive drive, seeing the equipment as engaged in a potential exchange of bodily fluids, but one that merged the suggestion of human genitals and technology, co-joining television and human reproduction. Colless finished with ‘If this is an emblem of maternity, then it is one convulsed in abortion. If an emblem of paternity, then it is accomplished in a dry and vain copulation’. These dysfunctional medical and anatomical analogies are not inappropriate as Cullen has often been quoted as described his work as a form of palliative care, a way of making incurable problems bearable.”
From Wayne Tunnicliffe, ‘Let’s get lost’ in Wayne Tunniliffe (ed.) Let’s get lost, Art Gallery of New South Wales, (exh. cat.), Sydney, 2000, p 11
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Exhibition history
Shown in 2 exhibitions
Australian Perspecta 1993, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 06 Oct 1993–28 Nov 1993
Adam Cullen: let's get lost, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 15 May 2008–27 Jul 2008
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Bibliography
Referenced in 7 publications
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Edward Colless, Australian Perspecta 1993, 'Adam Cullen', pg.24-25, Sydney, 1993, 25 (colour illus.).
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Felicity Fenner, The Sydney Morning Herald, ‘A genre beyond grunge’, pg.19, Sydney, 27 May 1994, 19.
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Benjamin Genocchio, Eyeline 29, ‘Miserabilism: The art of Adam Cullen’, pg.13-15, Brisbane, Summer 1995, 14 (illus.).
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Bruce James, The Sydney Morning Herald, ‘A good clean punch’, Sydney, pg.16, Sydney, 09 Oct 1993-10 Oct 1993, 16 (illus.).
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Catherine Lumby, World art: the magazine of contemporary visual arts, ‘Adam Cullen: The readymade saboteur’, pg.34-37, Melbourne, Nov 1993, 36 (colour illus.).
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Ingrid Periz, Adam Cullen: scars last longer, 2004, 17 (colour illus.).
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Wayne Tunnicliffe, Adam Cullen: let's get lost, Sydney, 2008, 11, 24-25 (colour illus.).
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