Freya Gabie. Everything Must Go

About

Freya drew on the history of Bolton, its long established role in the textile industry and the major part it played during the Industrial Revolution as well as exploring contemporary Bolton, and the culture, people and stories she uncovered there. 

In ‘Dark Steps’ Gabie worked with a Financial Trader, using the trading data of Brexit recomposed as a cadent pattern. She then approached a group of traditional Lancashire clog dancers who created a danced response to the data, in much the same way that historically, clog dancers would dance to the rhythm of their machines.

Elsewhere in the show, ‘Knocked up’ are a series of sculptures based on accounts of Bolton residents’ memories of the knocker upper sticks used to wake their mothers and fathers for work at the mill. These artifacts of social history have been sadly lost to time and none exist within any archive across the North West. These sculptures seek recapture the playful inventiveness of the knocker up men who employed ingenious means to alter the head of their sticks in order that they would not break the fragile glass windows.

As part of the show she has also produced as site specific work on Bridgeman Street, Bolton, this can be seen on a billboard, from the 7th to 21st November. 

neo:residency2016 is supported by The University of Bolton, GreatArt and neo:

The exhibition is supported by The National Lottery, The Market Place and Bolton Council. 

Freya Gabie’s work sits in the space between poetry and documentary, the surreal and the conceptual. She re-tells stories, taking them from the very ordinary into the realms of the romantic sublime; from grand endeavour to gentle gesture.
She works responsively to her environment: provoking a conversation with place, using the particular materials and artefacts found within that context as gathered components. She is interested in the unconscious exchange between objects, people and their environment, drawn to the tentative and peripheral, her work ruptures relationships between these entities through interjections that articulate new meaning and agency. 

Freya Gabie was born in South-West England and studied Sculpture at Chelsea College of Art and The Royal College of Art. She has exhibited in numerous exhibitions throughout the UK and abroad. In 2014 she was short-listed for the David Troostwyk / Matts Gallery Studio Award and Selected for Uncertain States and the Jerwood Drawing Prize. In spring 2015 she undertook residencies in Canary Wharf with the DepARTure Foundation; Fljotstunga, Iceland; and 108 in New York State, USA. She was shortlisted for the Combat Art Prize, Italy and The Griffin Open, London. This year she had a solo exhibition with 9b Projects, London and upcoming projects include an artist residency in USF, Bergen, Norway January 2017. 

More information can be found on her website www.freyagabie.com