Susan McCulloch has been an arts writer, book publisher and gallerist for 45 years. She grew up at Shoreham on the Mornington Peninsula with her actress mother Ella Bromley McCulloch and father – the art critic, author and founding director of the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Alan McCulloch AO. Susan is co-author and publisher of McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art; McCulloch’s Contemporary Aboriginal Art: the complete guide and co-director, with her daughter Emily McCulloch Childs, of the art gallery Everywhen Art, located in the McCullochs’ historic family home, Whistlewood at Shoreham. As an art writer for The Age, The Australian, the Australian Financial Review and art magazines 1981-2013, she wrote numerous arts feature articles and reviews, as well as investigative pieces on fakes, frauds, scandals, and scams in Australian art. In 2011 she received the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to art writing and publishing and is Adjunct Professor College of Design & Social Context, RMIT University.
What does story telling mean to me?
Story telling is in my blood. My father Alan McCulloch was a writer and a lively teller of tales both tall and true. My mother, Ellen wrote short stories for American and Australian women’s magazines. Regular visitors to our home at Shoreham included many famous literati and from this Peninsula base, Alan’s words on Australian art were published internationally. With this background I ‘fell into’ writing for major Australian press in my early 30s, having a keen curiosity to delve beneath the surface of the status quo – or simply the wish to bring to light the unique qualities of artists and their art.
