Ces McCully ‘Home to home’

In a world obsessed with the slick and hyperreal, I no longer have any interest in perfection. More than ever, I’m craving what can only be made with a human touch. It’s a kind of resistance, maybe.

Each piece involves many hours of physical labour — tufting by hand, building the surface line by line before the act of painting begins. It’s a repetitive, meditative act that leaves the body tired and the mind clear. There’s something in it that feels primal — as if the work is reaching back as much as it’s reaching forward, tapping into the human impulse to make; to mark time and place with rhythm, colour, and form.

Somewhere between abstraction and language, these shapes have formed slowly; growing over time like the human language, or landscape, or family memory. I don’t know if they’re letters, figures, maps, or moods — maybe all of it. For me they’re like personal hieroglyphs; not to be decoded, but felt. And what I want the viewer to feel more than anything is a sense of comfort and warmth.

I think a lot about cosiness. Not in a stylised way, but in a deeply human sense. The comfort and safety of being somewhere that lets you fully exhale. The act of love in laying a blanket over someone or gifting something hand-made or knitted. This show is about that kind of warmth; about physical and emotional safety, and the comforting imperfect mess of being human.

Ces McCully, 2025

Ces McCully (b. 1982) is an artist from Melbourne, now based in the south of France. An exploration of human and social psychology is often at the forefront of her work, which typically is a response to current events, ranging from our exposure to rapidly-changing technology to political divisions. Her preoccupation with how we view ourselves and others has driven this current body of work, where she has established new ways of combining textiles with painting. Referred to as her ‘soft paintings’, McCully embeds wool into raw canvas to transform it into a 3-dimensional piece before painting it entirely; bringing together these opposing hard and soft forces – a balance of the masculine and feminine.

McCully's practice spans painting and sculpture, characterised by a dynamic interplay between abstraction and figuration. Her work explores the psychological and emotional resonances of the human form, often dissolving bodily structures into fluid, gestural fields of colour and line. Through this process, McCully creates compositions that hover between presence and absence, inviting a contemplative engagement with states of vulnerability, intimacy, and transformation.

Working with a distinctive visual language, McCully employs layered mark-making and a nuanced palette to evoke both corporeal and atmospheric sensations. Her paintings frequently suggest fragmented or shifting figures, where boundaries between body and environment become porous. This ambiguity allows for multiple readings, positioning the viewer within a space of emotional and perceptual openness.

McCully holds a Bachelor of Contemporary Arts from Deakin University.