Darren Cullen is a satirical artist, illustrator and writer, born in Leeds to Irish migrant parents and now based in south London. Cullen initially thought he wanted to go into advertising as a career, studying it at Leeds College of Art where he learned the language and techniques of the medium but became steadily horrified at the ethical implications involved. Claiming that “manipulating the desires and aspirations of the public, and especially children, using an arsenal of sophisticated and emotionally damaging psychological techniques is an appalling way to make a living and an even worse way to sustain an economy.” 

Cullen abandoned advertising to study Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art. He now uses the language of advertising to make work about everything from the empty promises of consumerism, to the lies of military recruiters, billionaire media-moguls and centrist politicians, through to neoliberalism, greenwashing, and the marketing-hype driving the AI slop bubble.

In 2015 Cullen opened ‘Pocket Money Loans‘ at Banksy’s Dismaland attraction, the same year a series of short films he wrote called ‘Action Man: Battlefield Casualties‘ was released in collaboration with Veterans for Peace UK.

In 2018 he released the Mini Daily Mail. A year later he co-curated a Museum of Neoliberalism with Gavin Grindon which closed in 2024 so it could be demolished and turned into luxury flats.

The Hell Bus, a pre-apocalyptic marketing suite about oil company greenwashing was launched in 2021 and has been on the road since, regularly featuring at Glastonbury festival.

In recent years he debuted the Apartheid Apartments installation and unveiled his first major sculpture, Golf Cart One, at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darren_Cullen_(activist)