Richie Culver

Richie Culver (b. 1979; UK) currently lives and works between Porto, Portugal, and London, UK, where he is pursuing an MA Painting program at The Royal College of Art, London. Born in Hull in the North of England, Culver left school with no qualifications to work in a factory making caravans. His practice encompasses diverse elements that range from painting, sculpture and photography to digital performance and music. Within this, Culver’s work is largely biographical wrestling with aspects of contemporary masculinity, the class system and the digital lens through which we live our lives.

With his fresh and unconventional works he is pushing the boundaries of art, on a visual and contextual level, creating profound artworks that do not fail to create passionate responses from his audience – positive as well as negative. What strikes most is the immediacy with which he communicates through his art. The latest works being mostly text based, he manages to explore the fine line between statements that at first glance seem trivial and weirdly specific but then develop a deep, often very subjective quality based on the viewer. Especially on social media his works tend to cause a stir also ranging outside the usual bubble of artists and art lovers, making him a controversial figure between the advocation for and undermining of the contemporary art world.