ALOW Gallery presents: Abbey McCulloch — HOME
Celebrated Gold Coast artist Abbey McCulloch returns with her first solo exhibition on the Gold Coast in over 17 years — HOME.
Through electric pastel tones and tender lines, Abbey explores the intricate relationships between women, the complexity of selfhood, and the quiet strength found in coming back to oneself.
In an age of constant distraction, her calm, self-assured figures invite us to turn inward — to find stillness, belonging, and connection in our own skin.
This exhibition marks a deeply personal homecoming for Abbey - a chance to reconnect with her local audience and share a new body of work that feels both intimate and universal.
Join us for the opening night celebration at ALOW Gallery
Saturday, November 1st
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM
ALOW Gallery — 2/53-55 Cronulla Ave Gold Coast Highway, Mermaid Beach, QLD
All welcome | Free event
Exhibition runs through to November 14th, 2025
RSVP here: EventbriteAbbeyMcCulloch
These works explore the emotional terrain of womanhood: the love and the rage, the softness and the steel. Painted in electric pastels and carved with sensitive, searching lines, the figures feel like talismans — calm, self-assured, painfully alive. They ache for a new way of being, and they dare you to do the same.
The works speak to the complicated relationships between women and the complexities of being a woman, as well as the idea of finding peace with yourself and your place in the world. In the age of endless technological distraction and information, we are made to be so hyper aware of our bodies and our feelings.
Through painting these electric pastel colours and sensitive lines, I am looking to depict these calm and self-assured creatures as something to aspire to. Often, we choose to look outwards when we should be returning home to ourselves and this often-slippery dance with selfhood is what this show is about.
I like to think of these characters that I paint as a kind of ticket out of madness, taking us towards a new state of mind. The faces in my paintings see something that I don’t. They seem to ache for a new feeling, a new way to be.
The women in these paintings could love you or tear your fucking head off at the same time and it sums up how I have always felt – both conflicted and in search of peace. There is such a love/hate thing with being human. I am always trying to paint these complex, terrifying and yet wonderful feelings that shift within us. I am restless, in constant flux with who I am supposed to be, especially for others and my images give me peace. They feel what I want to feel, they free me.
The characters in my works are a bit like talismans. I’ve usually gone through quite a bit to get them here, layers and lots of wiping the image away and re-starting over the top, leaving tiny traces. The struggle within a work drags me into a new world, a certain kind of truth amongst what is often hidden within our many layers of subterfuge.
The process of painting and drawing teaches me to look at failure differently. Mistakes are the only way forward and every work that I have ever made has felt like I am getting warmer, getting closer. Oil paint is all about perseverance. Oil painting itself is inherently hopeful, it’s all about knowing the materiality and somehow unknowing at the same time. It is a substance that feels fluid and unfixed, despite its connection to history and tradition, it’s the perfect metaphor for renewal.
I often question an image that happens simply and yet those works can be the most powerful, the ones that come from inhibition, free from the idea of completion. It represents what we do to ourselves, we over-complicate, we over-look, we are never enough and yet it’s all there, if only we could see it.
I often feel like I could paint every day for the rest of my life and still not tire - and really, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world than in my studio. It puts me in touch with a feeling that is hard to explain, it brings me closer than anything else to the feeling of being alive.