Jedda Daisy Culley
Contemporary artist Jedda Daisy Culley’s works are alive with depth and feeling, exploring notions of womanhood, landscape and failure.
Words: Holly Terry | Photography: Kitty Callaghan & Fraser Anderson
The last of the Don’t Fuck Cowboy Gang by Jedda Daisy Culley.
‘As someone who thrashes and obsesses over things this is where I must place restrictions on myself, it’s hard for me to stop, I want to destroy everything, it’s in my nature to overwork,’ says Jedda Daisy Culley. Photo: Kitty Callaghan
‘The most crucial part of my painting practice is the marks are light and seeming effortless in their gesture, for me the subjects are so heavy in feeling that the work needs vast, sweeping, quick moving expression to balance,’ says Jedda Daisy Culley. Pictured: Her soul dancing with a long bamboo stick by Jedda Daisy Culley. Photo: Fraser Anderson
It feels as if NSW based artist Jedda Daisy Culley’s artistry runs so deep that she could never do anything else, her creativity is so engrained within, it could never be any different. When reflecting on her making, every word has been thought out meticulously, methodically but somehow melodically, too.
Her studio days start around 11am, procrastination is ever present – a necessary ritual to ignite anticipation. Whether her time is spent generally fussing around, pondering through books or drinking coffee, for Jedda, it is the mundane processes, which are most important. Hasty yet considered, her visually anarchic, gestural works parallel the urgency she builds from them.
‘Most people think my studio seems chaotic, it’s true I make a mess, my studio clothes are dirty, but what people don’t see is the set-up before I start to work; it is so structured, it’s like a grid, not a brush or colour out of place, everything is premixed, all the correct rags are preselected and placed accordingly. The process of setting this up is slow and considered, it must be fool proof.’
Sheathed with depth and feeling, Culley contemplates the misshaping’s of her own life and draws upon the moments she has failed. Alive with contemplation of her own experience, the works reflect an intimate glance into her mind; gestural, honest and raw.
A consideration of things that have been said and moments that have passed, Culley’s expression is rapid, or, in her words, manic, inviting the viewer into a stride that matches the pace within her mind, how she paints.
‘As an artist I am rendered useless in the face of perfection and beauty, I treat shedding the layers and hypocrisies of the human condition as an obsession,’ says Jedda Daisy Culley. Photo: Fraser Anderson
100 Degrees the Hottest by Jedda Daisy Culley.
“My inspiration comes from the misshapings within my own experience, the moments in my life where I have failed or been let down.”
I Just Downloaded 1.5 Hour Meditation and So Pumped by Jedda Daisy Culley.
She Sleeps with an Aqua Sword on a Flip Knife in a Tiny Handbag (And Your Mother’s Psychic Spaghetti river) by Jedda Daisy Culley. Photo: Fraser Anderson
Embodying a connection between motherhood, landscape and the female form, Jedda feels the undulating forms of a woman alive within the earthly terrain. For Jedda, the dramatic landscape’s brutality and sweeping pains juxtaposes the intimate, softer aspects of land, paralleling life, motherhood and procreation.
Her latest exhibition at Jerico Contemporary, Download Hats, sought to rewrite this motherhood archetype with bold intimacy and is alive with a conversation which deconstructs the fails of masculine authority and rewrites the mother archetype with a bold, yet nurturing softness.
The most crucial part of Culley’s practice is the gestural ease in which they carry. For the artist, the subjects carry a weighted depth, a heaviness in feeling which she counters by vast and sweeping movement. ‘As someone who thrashes and obsesses over things this is where I must place restrictions on myself, it’s hard for me to stop, I want to destroy everything, it’s in my nature to overwork.’
The artists’ expressive works have been evolving from strength to strength over recent years and it is no surprise her practice has garnered the attention of some of the most reputable contemporary galleries in Australia. Culley keeps relatively hush-hush about what’s to come, but something exciting as soon as September is in the works. Watch this space!