Luke Campbell’s article ‘In the Rooms: A Walk Through the 2025 Archibald, Wynne & Sulman Prizes‘ notes that Lucy Culliton’s Cliff Hole, Bottom Bullock “offers something quietly profound. It is a return to the physical, a reconnection to place”.
Excerpt from Luke’s article:
‘Vistas that would have been a common sight some years ago now feel almost exotic. They are places rarely encountered except on day trips to wine regions or after taking a wrong turn that leads, unexpectedly, into open country. As more of us live as city dwellers within an expanding urban sprawl, an undeveloped block on the edge of a housing estate is often the closest thing we experience as landscape.
It is in this context that Lucy Culliton’s Cliff Hole, Bottom Bullock brings us gently but firmly back to the natural world, albeit one that has been tamed and worn by the presence of livestock. The scene she depicts is vast, cleared, and marked by use. It is pastoral, but not idealised. This is land that has been worked, not simply admired. The paddock becomes both a memory and a presence. It is expansive, grounded, and increasingly unfamiliar to many.
The painting’s scale is encompassing, cinematic in its horizontal sweep, with a high horizon line that loops back through the reflection of the sky in the meandering creek below. Culliton’s work serves as a quiet reminder that landscape painting still holds the power to reconnect us to place. Though traditional in medium, her approach is direct and tactile. This is not the landscape as a sweeping romantic vista. It is dirt, fencing, and working land, depicted with an affection that is felt rather than embellished.
In a show filled with psychological portraiture and conceptual tension, Cliff Hole, Bottom Bullock offers something quietly profound. It is a return to the physical, a reconnection to place. It draws the viewer out of the gallery and into the paddock, not as a visitor, but as someone who has been there before.’
Lucy’s painting will be on display at Orange Regional Gallery for the first leg of the 2025 Archibald, Wynne and Sulman touring exhibition, until 16 November 2025.
The Wynne Prize is Australia’s oldest art prize. It was established following a bequest by Richard Wynne and was first awarded in 1897 to mark the official opening of the Art Gallery of New South Wales at its present site.
Judged annually by the Art Gallery of New South Wales trustees, this year 52 finalists were selected from 758 entries for the best landscape painting of Australian scenery or figurative sculpture.
Free event, everyone welcome.
Exhibition Dates: 6 September – 16 November 2025
Where: Orange Regional Gallery, 149 Byng St, Orange NSW 2800
Open from 10am-4pm daily (closed Christmas Day, Boxing Day and Good Friday).
