A sculpture exhibition by Jane McAdam Freud in the garden of the Freud Museum.
Stone Speak, 2010, Jane McAdam Freud
Jane McAdam Freud collaborates with an “author duo” to express the concept of writers working together. Responding to their process through sculpture, the resulting triptych symbolizes the twists and turns implicit in fiction: the ‘play’ with events to turn reality on its head. Rooted in the imagination the novel grows and emerges from fragmented parts. Working from the authors’ likeness, McAdam Freud experiments with large clay relief forms suggestive of paper scrolls, perhaps torn and worn.
The concept
The title “Stone Speak” was derived from Sigmund Freud’s comment when referring to his collected antiquities exclaiming, “Stones speak!” Stone Speak is meant much like the term “Art speak”. It refers to the language of the stone in its ability to express meaning. The meaning is expressed through the material, analogous to the way language is articulated through words.
“Psychodynamically, I wanted to express the inside of the sculpture as a metaphor for the thought process. Also I wanted the inside to be as telling as the outside. The process required me to make the sculptures hollow and uniform in order to fire the clay. I hollowed the forms following the outer contours. With the reverse side of the portraits (as seen from the back) the resulting image is random in that I made very few conscious decisions as the image was created by the process.. I like the way that the inside is so different in expression from the outside. It could be a comment on our public face verses our private face.”
Jane McAdam Freud
Related Resources
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Jane McAdam Freud MA RCA is a sculptor and multi-disciplinary artist educated at the Royal College of Art and is a recipient of the British Art Medal Scholarship in Rome. McAdam Freud exhibits internationally, holding twenty solo shows since 1996. Jane’s work has been acquired for numerous Public Collections including the British Museum, V&A, National Gallery Archives, and the National Gallery of Greece.