Glue Factory is a 110 page book of paintings by Melbourne painter Jim McCullough.
From the age of 22-27 Jim worked as an undertaker, collecting deceased body’s for the coroner’s office, normally from crime scenes, car accidents or private homes. Over 6 years since, Jim has created a series of works built around what he witnessed and experienced while holding this occupation. Through these both abstract and literal works, Jim creates imagined narratives around these events that showcase the deceased in the moments leading to their end. It makes for a compelling and unique outlook on both life and death.
'The painting’s Jim McCullough has created for this book, Glue Factory, are both one large self-portrait in its own right, but also split off individually, showing a time in Jim’s life that not many people would ever be able to go through. Knowing personally how Jim handled himself and the respect he showed to the families and the ones that had passed away. McCullough is an artist's artist, the way he both knows himself and his craft well enough to not launch into making works directly about this period, but reflecting. What I see both in Jim and his work, knowing that all art, deserved time, time to be able handle the paintings, the story, the depiction of memory and time to reflect.' – Justin Williams
110 pages, 21 x 29.7 cm, softcover, MOM (Melbourne).