Jane McAdam Freud. Mother Mould

About

As, the daughter of famed portrait artist Lucian Freud and great-granddaughter of ground-breaking psychologist Sigmund Freud, McAdam Freud is highly influenced by her family history. Her sculpture practice explores sexuality and unconscious influence, among other theories of her great-grandfather.

With her predilection for the pairing of opposites the artist’s latest works look to the omnipresent but often ignored mother figure. Her, already internationally acclaimed* yet still to be exhibited, new works contemplate ‘the mother as mould’. This is in direct contrast to her previous exploration of ‘the father as muse’, explored in Family Matters, her first retrospective at the gallery and in her solo exhibition Lucian Freud My Father at the Freud Museum in 2012.

Mother Mould, further explores the theme of family, through a dozen of large-scale sculptures composed of found objects enmeshed in wire. Evoking the idea of creation, these installations pair the found and the made, the incidental and the intended. The resulting works uncannily suggest the mother as the source, containing, shaping and replicating forms.

“Naturally we are ‘moulded’ by our mothers experience from birth. However this symbiotic relationship precedes birth as, in reality, ‘we’ go back to the egg. After all, it was at our conception that we had our first ‘feed’. We were formed from the egg that first attached itself to our mother’s womb. Through her blood, nourished by her food, we were first fed.’”

Some works reference ‘the egg’ both literally and symbolically, revealing the poetic reminiscent objects entwined within each structure. Ranging from the babies bottle to the soft toy, the artist purposefully alters the role and importance of the object. For instance the focal point in the large, yet etherial bell like structure Ding, was once a baby’s bottle found on the roadside.

Coupled together as sequels, these self-supporting sculptures are stable with a transparent quality, giving the viewer the impression of seeing both sides simultaneously, as integral to each other. Breaking from tradition, these contemporary sculptures have no armature (hidden support) so the works reveal both the process and the final work. Just as the viewing the art exposes our inner psyche, McAdam Freud playfully evokes the idea of viewing the mind, (psychoanalysis) by exposing her works as transparent to all.