num_pages: 160
description: Acute Misfortune is an unflinching portrait of talent and addiction.In 2008 the artist Adam Cullen invited journalist Erik Jensen to stay in his spare room and write his biography. A publisher wanted it Cullen said. He was sick and ready to talk. Everything would be on the record. What followed were four years of intense honesty and a relationship that became increasingly dangerous. At one point Cullen shot Jensen to see how committed he was to the book. At another he threw Jensen from a speeding motorbike.Eventually Jensen realised the contract did not exist. Cullen had invented it to get to know the writer. The book became an investigation of Cullens psychology and the decline of his final years. In Acute Misfortune we have a riveting account of the life and death of one of Australias most celebrated artists. The figure famous for his Archibald Prize-winning portrait of David Wenham is followed through drug deals and periods of deep self-reflection onward into his trial for weapon possession and finally his death in 2012 at the age of 46.The story is by turns tender and horrifying: a spare tale of art sex drugs and childhood told at close quarters and without judgment.
language: English
title: Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen
publisher: Black Inc.