Australian artist Ces McCully works between abstraction and figuration, creating paintings that hold tension as both a visual and emotional force. Based in the south of France, her practice reflects the complexities of contemporary life, where intimacy, resistance, humour and unease often exist in close proximity. Her works are direct yet layered, balancing softness with confrontation and personal feeling with broader cultural charge.

McCully’s compositions move between recognition and ambiguity, where bodies, symbols and gestures appear to surface, dissolve and re-form. Colour, line and shape are used with a deliberate immediacy, creating works that feel instinctive but carefully held. Across painting, drawing and site-specific projects, her visual language resists neat resolution, allowing tension, vulnerability and quiet defiance to remain present.