James Cullinane

 

James Cullinane's 9-foot drawings of children at play are made on-site by hand-pushing thousands of steel tacks into the wall.  His images are culled from old rulebooks and blown-up to gargantuan proportions. Defined by bold, jittery contours, the regimented activities of kids are literally pinned to the wall under the auspices of good clean fun. Cullinane pricks the framework of memory in these menacing and oddly nostalgic drawings.  Beneath their surface lies the suggestion that play, (like work) can be a condition of oppressive force rather than an expression of freewill.