Grace Culley
Get Away

Grace Culley’s Get Away explores the desire for escapism, the means by which it can be carried out, and the factors that motivate this type of thinking. The exhibition’s title alludes to the choice of removing oneself from unideal circumstances, a statement telling someone to leave, and a common phrase referring to a holiday. 
 
As a starting point, Get Away draws upon Culley’s experience of moving between regional Victoria and the inner-city suburbs, before returning to the outskirts of Metropolitan Melbourne. What began as a personal exploration was later expanded through lateral-thinking research into different cultural movements that were, in part, motivated by a desire to escape aspects of the times in which they existed. In this new installation, Culley patchworks botanical paintings and sculptures over airbrushed images of architectural remains of the British Industrial Revolution, cottages and references to her various homes. 

By leaning into botanical shapes and naturalistic interior decor, Culley blurs the lines between internal and external spaces, both real and imagined. Layering these works over a backdrop of smoke-like paintings, Culley selectively covers or reveals specific memories and references driving her daydreams of escaping to an isolated cottage – each work forming a unique yet important piece of an incomplete puzzle. 

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Based in Victoria, Grace Culley is an artist working in drawing, painting and sculpture. Her practice investigates the various roles that repetition plays in trying to understand oneself and one’s environment. Underpinned by Culley’s experience of repetitive behaviours resulting from Tourette’s Syndrome, her works are made through labour-intensive processes, emphasising how repetition intensifies sensations like pleasure, escapism, discipline, and damnation. 

Culley completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2021. Solo exhibitions and projects include Closer to Nature at Sutton Projects, Fitzroy, VIC, 2021; and major solo commission Surprised face; Heart Eyes at West Space, Collingwood, VIC, 2023. Select group exhibitions include Various Small Fires (2025) and Gertrude Studios 2024 at Gertrude Contemporary, Naarm Melbourne; The Possibilities Are Immense: 50 Years of the George Paton Gallery at George Paton Gallery, Naarm Melbourne, 2024; Exterminating Pencil Volume 3 at Caspar Gallery, Castlemaine, 2022; and Accumulates in the throat, emerges from the mouth at KINGS Artist Run, Naarm Melbourne, 2021. Culley contributed a sculptural work in collaboration with artist Raafat Ishaak for Ishaak’s exhibition Eye Looking at Large Glass Broken, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Naarm Melbourne, 2023.