To capture Adam Cullen in a breath is to say he fused the high and low. He reached the echelons of Australian art, winning the Archibald Prize in 2000 for his portrait of David Wenham and featuring in a major retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2008. He also revelled in cultural underbellies, once chaining a pig’s head to his ankle for two weeks and befriending the notorious Chopper Read. His work is full of contradictions. Dark subjects captured in technicolour splendour, irreverence beside brutality, seduction slipping into the grotesque. 

In this collection of limited-edition hand-signed prints, the brilliance of Cullen’s vision beams. There are odes to the rebels of Australian history, fights, dances, and beasts of mythology, each captured with an incendiary, captivating excess. Cullen the persona leaks through, a figure who was as challenging as he was charming, a punk who in spite of his success always perceived himself as an outsider.

In all its edginess, Cullen’s work has found a devout collector following. Stripped of sentimentality, he roamed the corners of society, masculinity and the human psyche. There is something refreshing about Cullen’s work – a smack of bright colour and ferocity. When he died prematurely in 2012, tributes from across Australia poured in – a true individual of Australian art has been lost. In the words of curator Joanna Mendelssohn: 

“Adam’s most distinctive quality… was the way in which he openly and joyously indulged in “borderlining” – seeing how far he could get away with irritating the hierarchy.” 

For rebels, collectors of contemporary and pop art or those seeking an edge, Cullen is a revelation.