VIEWING ROOM

JEDDA-DAISY CULLEY
‘AND YOUR MOTHER’S PSYCHIC SPAGHETTI RIVER’

‘She sleeps, with a shining aqua sword and a flip knife in a tiny handbag. She knows: express posted salmon is still good to eat, hallucinogens’ will turn your breast milk green and a raccoon, and a cat can be friends, but they can also be enemies. She says, don’t take the boat with the big guy in the fluoro orange onesie he’s gonna eat snakes alive while you die. When you hug her, your feet are off the floor; she’s the throat of the waterfall.’

– JEDDA-DAISY CULLEY

Jerico Contemporary is pleased to present our fourth solo exhibition with Australian artist Jedda-Daisy Culley, And your mother’s psychic spaghetti river. Showing exclusively online, the exhibition will run from Thursday 12th August through to Saturday 4th September 2021. 

Exploring a narrative perforated by deception and her fatalistic relationship with misconception, And your mother’s psychic spaghetti river navigates the space between death and survival. Fooled by masters of disguise, this new body of work sees Culley work through her profound emotional response, drawing on themes of abandonment, fear and strength; speaking to the sentiment that there is no greater power than a mother fighting to save her children.

The laws of attraction can prove to be fatal. If a cowboy says he’s a cowboy, how can you be sure? Just because he’s wearing cowboy boots doesn’t make it true. Similarly, the people in uniform we look to and rely on for protection can deceive us. During the floods that ravaged rural New South Wales earlier this year, Culley and her two children were involved in a rescue mission gone wrong that left them fending for their lives against the undertow of the Colo River. Despite being aboard a vessel of men in uniform who promised safety to higher ground, help had never felt further away.

In a series of eight vibrant and glowing paintings, Culley’s figures return wearing cowboy hats and carrying various weapons of protection, raised and at the ready. As if spotted in the distance of a desert plain, they appear like mirages descended upon the horizon. Their wonky smiles belie danger or trickery, instead they radiate colour and pulse with an energy evocative of the spiritual realm. The thickly applied oil paint moves in waves as if torn from the outside edges of a memory, giving way to a ghostly quality. This is a result of Culley’s creative process using an impression technique, where she applies a sheet of glass to the wet surface of the painting, turns it upside down, subjects it to an intense moment of pressure and then peels it away to reveal a completely different surface to work with underneath; a new skin, fleshy and hopeful. Acting as a metaphor in itself for processing the grief of the boat incident, Culley questions the varying interpretations of our experiences when we allow for our perspective to shift.  

By using the recurring symbol of the lone cowboy, the artist nods to characteristics of independence, self-reliance and deep reverence for the natural world. Traversing the wild west in symbiosis with their surroundings, cowboys forge a mutual connection with their environment, rather than the people who occupy it. In her previous bodies of work, Culley has long considered the landscape as a feminine vessel of creation that melds with the earth and cosmos. Similarly, rivers are an extension of this lifeforce; ones that remember everything. Indirectly assuming the role of the cowboy, through her self-reflexive paintings Culley illuminates a correlation between the female experience and a universal masculine archetype, suggesting perhaps that courage and perseverance rely on instinct rather than gendered stereotypes and their misleading facades, that are too often disguised beneath the tipped brim of a cowboy hat.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY:

Jedda-Daisy Culley was born in 1984, Perth, Western Australia. The artist holds an Master of Fine Arts (UNSW) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts, with First Class Honours (UNSW). Her solo exhibitions include, 'Pls send pics this feels one~sided', Cement Fondu Project Space, Sydney (2021), ‘WIMON’, Jerico Contemporary, Sydney (2020), ‘FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELINGS’, Jerico Contemporary, Sydney (2020), ‘Printers and Portals’, Jerico Contemporary, Sydney (2019), 'Burn at the Lands Brim', Mild Manners Gallery, Sydney (2018), 'Universal Love', Mild Manners Gallery, Sydney (2016), ‘Bits of Pink’, Sheffer Gallery, Sydney (2010), ‘Peace and Universe’, Chalk Horse, Sydney (2009) and ‘Footsies and Dirty Drunkards’ Chalk Horse, Sydney (2008). Her group exhibitions include, 'String Theory', Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2013), ‘k.O.M.A Project’, Mild Manners Gallery, Sydney (2013), ‘Hands On’, Hazlehurst Regional Gallery, Sydney (2011), ‘Chalk Reindeer’, Chalk Horse, Sydney (2010) and ‘String Theory’ Chalk Horse, Sydney (2007). The artist currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia.