Emily McCulloch Childs is a gallerist, curator, writer, researcher, publisher and maker. Since 2003 she has been co-director of McCulloch & McCulloch, since 2018, Everywhen Artspace. She is co-author & publisher with her mother, Susan McCulloch, of the 4th edition of McCulloch's Encyclopedia of Australian Art and McCulloch's Contemporary Aboriginal Art: the complete guide. She is the author and co-publisher of New Beginnings: Classic paintings from the Corrigan Collection of 21st Century Aboriginal Art.
Emily’s background in Australian art stems from the work of her grandfather, Alan McCulloch who was one of the foremost art critics of the 20th century, and whose interest in Aboriginal art led to him curating an exhibition of bark paintings from Museum Victoria in America in 1965, and to the urging for the purchasing, restoration and exhibition of Indigenous art by our state and national galleries as far back as the 1940s. She undertook art studies as a child with her grandfather, covering aspects of art making including drawing, painting and woodcarving to curating and arts administration. Further childhood studies included ceramics, printmaking and photography.
Emily completed a BA (Hons) in English at La Trobe University in 1998, with a special focus on Post-Colonial Studies, which has largely informed much of her curating and writing. She has written for Australian Art Collector, Garland, The World of Antiques &Art, The Scene, Aboriginal Art Magazine and ArtsHub.
In 2011 Emily was awarded a Creative Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria to research Indigenous resistance fighters of Australia’s colonial frontier. This led to an in-depth ongoing project on Australia's north-western colonial frontier, involving extensive research in the Northern Territory Archives, AIATSIS, Wadeye community archives, interviews and oral history with the Wadeye, Pirlangimpi and Larrakia communities.
Emily has been a recurrent judge for awards in the media and art sectors, including the United Nations Association of Australia Media Award for Indigenous Rights and Recognition (2013-19), and the Museums Australia Victoria Awards (2015-19). She has worked in galleries since 1994, with a particular focus on Aboriginal art, co-curating hundreds of exhibitions since 2009. Emily has been guest curator for several public and commercial gallery exhibitions, writer in residence, a speaker on panels, exhibition openings and events, and a contributing curatorial catalogue essayist.
In 2013, she created The Indigenous Jewellery Project (IJP), the first nation-wide Indigenous Australian contemporary jewellery project, working with Indigenous jewellers at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owned art centres across Australia, comprising research, workshops, photography, films, and exhibitions.
IJP partners with artists and contemporary jewellers Kate Rohde (Pieces of Eight) and Melinda Young (Pieces of Eight, UNSW), and has initiated projects comprising of workshops and exhibitions with Aboriginal owned art centres Erub Erwer Meta (Torres Strait Islands), Ernabella Arts (APY Lands), Ikuntji Artists (Haasts Bluff, NT), Buku-Larrnggay Mulka (Yirrkala, NT), Gab Titui (Torres Strait Islands), Kemarre Arts (ACT) and Aboriginal community groups including Dhariwaa Elders Group (Walgett, NSW) and Jaanymili Bawrrungga Inc. (Bowraville, NSW). Projects have been exhibited nationally including at the JamFactory (TARNANTHI), NGV Design Store, National Contemporary Jewellery Award (Griffith Regional Gallery & Sturt Centre for Design), Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre, Australian Design Centre, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, artisan, Stanley Street Galleries, City of Perth, Artitja Fine Art, Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory), Radiant Pavilion Melbourne Jewellery & Object Biennial, Parcours Bijoux (Paris), Contemporary Wearables Biennial Jewellery Award & Exhibition (Toowoomba Regional Gallery), Peninsula Hot Springs, Flinders University City Gallery store, and Everywhen Artspace. IJP has partnered with Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre & ANU School of Art & Design Object & Metal Studio to deliver several professional contemporary jewellery workshops and create the first artist-in-residence for an Indigenous contemporary jeweller at an Australian university.
Works from IJP projects have been collected by major public galleries including the Maritime Museum, Toowoomba Regional Gallery and the National Gallery of Australia, and the project has been documented in Garland, the magazine of the World Crafts Council and featured on ABC TV, Canberra, and in Crucible, for Current Obsession magazine for Munich Jewellery Week. To date IJP has worked with around 150 Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander jewellers from all across Australia.
IJP has been supported by the Australia Council, Australian Government Indigenous Languages & Arts Program, Santos, Creative Partnerships Australia, Craft ACT: Craft & Design Centre, Australian Design Centre and Create NSW. As part of a deeper curatorial practice, Emily began learning techniques from IJP teachers, and participated in workshops alongside the artists, undertaking more considered study with Melinda Young from 2015.
She has studied silversmithing and other jewellery techniques with IJP at ANU School of Art & Design Object & Metal Studio, including workshops with silversmith Alison Jackson, and has since developed her practice into working primarily with natural beeswax cast into metals, mainly focusing on rings, with occasional small objects, vessels, necklaces, brooches and bracelets.
The conceptual nature of contemporary jewellery allows a new dimension into her work as a researcher and communicator, alongside a practice of the handmade, craft and body adornment. Her work made from 2020 onwards concerns issues around her own invisible disability of long term post viral chronic illness and issues around ableism, eugenics and colonisation. More recently she has included painting in enamel on metals.
Her work can be found at emilymccullochchilds.com and Instagram @emimccc