Skip to main content

Charlotte Saint Cullen

Leeds
A Love Letter
Contact
Links

Charlotte Saint Cullen’s practice is a love letter and act of resistance. Working with metal, glass, stone, flowers and found materials, Cullen’s practice speaks to loss, love and faith in the unknown. Drawing on the give and take of working with primarily hard materials, they apply a range of processes including plasma cutting, welding, soldering and carving. The result are sculptures which hold marks as if scars from the action of their making. This contrasts with reparative processes and found materials embedded in the making, including weaving, flower arranging and ornamentation, which reprioritise careful attentiveness. Enacting sketches or drafts of a composition, flat sheets of mild steel with unfinished edges are cut into, intersect, and hold new materials. These crafted objects hold their story through a vulnerable material memory, appearing still in process. 

 

Cullen’s simple forms value labour and the material memory of the labour they enact, centring healing within the legacies which make such acts necessary – the pain of treatment which ravishes the body almost as much as the illness, caring for a loved one with addiction, rebuilding community in the aftermath of destruction, the longing of the displaced, the agony of grief.

Lived Experience

Charlotte Saint Cullen’s practice is a love letter and act of resistance, they work across metal, glass, stone, flower arranging and found materials. Cullen was Axis Fellow 2023-24, and Yorkshire Sculpture International Associate 2021-22. Cullen has completed public commissions, most recently for Leeds2023, and undertaken residencies, notably YYT Museum, Shanghai, China (2019). Recent solo exhibitions include Blank_ Leeds (2022), Patriot Hall, Edinburgh (2021), Leeds Central Library (2021), and group exhibitions Threshold, Leeds (2025), Lacy Road, New York (2025), Hypha Gallery, London (2024-25), Gloam, Sheffield (2024), Leeds Art Gallery (2023). Cullen has received funding from Arts Council England, Henry Moore Foundation and AN amongst others.

Cullen completed their Practice-led PhD with the Centre for Sculptural Thinking at the University of Huddersfield in 2019, funded by Huddersfield University Vice Chancellors studentship and supported by Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Cullen is Lecturer at York St John University, York where they established and ran Vessel gallery, and a committee member of serf studios and project space, Leeds. Upcoming projects include Studies for a Shield After Battle (cumdach), book of collected essays to be published by Village books with a forward by Prof. Jo Applin (Courtauld), solo exhibition at Village, Manchester, Necromancy conference at Gravensteen prison, Leidan University, Netherlands.

 

Child

They Might Fight

Study for a Shield After Battle (A New World Lay Inside the Old One)

Bones of the Water Horse

Retreat of the Warrior (Latent Extinction) III

Retreat of the Warrior (Latent Extinction) II

Retreat of the Warrior (Agricultural Warfare) III

Retreat of the Warrior (Agricultural Warfare) II

Retreat of the Warrior (Agricultural Warfare) I

Retreat of the Warrior (Latent Extinction) I

Featured in

Blog

Axis 2023 Fellowship Recipients Announced!

Profile

Artist Spotlight: Charlotte Cullen

Curated

Embodied Knowledge: knowing from the inside

By Katrina Cowling

Join Axis

We support artists

Funding, visibility, connection and practical help. 

Membership includes £15 million of Public Liability Insurance!

Axis is an independent charity, funded by our members. 
Become a Member

Axis turns 35 this year

In 2026, we’ll put more than £70,000 directly into artists’ hands.

We support artists with funding, visibility, connection and practical help. 

Membership includes £15 million of Public Liability Insurance!

Axis is an independent charity, funded by our members. 
Learn more