Up close with Freud
Imagine being able to examine an X-ray of Sigmund Freud’s skull, peruse letters in his desk drawer left at his death in 1939, and get familiar with his iconic psychoanalyst’s couch.
Seven WA artists spent three weeks in residence at the Freud Museum in London with access to a range of archives, from family albums to the painful prosthesis Freud wore towards the end of his life as he battled oral cancer.
The fascinating result of their research features in An Internal Difficulty: Australian Artists at the Freud Museum London.
Andrew Nicholls, curator and instigator of the project, says he didn’t know the museum existed until he saw it in a documentary.
“The Freud Museum people were cautious because they’re small and pushed for resources but once we were actually there and working, I think they were really happy to have us,” he says.
Artists Thea Costantino, Susan Flavell, Tarryn Gill, Travis Kelleher and Pilar Mata Dupont all took part in the residency with Nicholls. Fibre artist Nalda Searles was touring Australia with her solo exhibition and relied on photos the group sent. Her recycled silk dress placed on a “fainting” mannequin references an artwork on Freud’s walls, and includes two entwined tiger snakes across the abdomen.
“When I was younger I did psychiatric nursing training and studied Freud and Jung at that time, so I’ve always been interested in matters of the mind,” she says.
Other works in the exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts include Costantino’s detailed drawings of Freud’s prosthesis and of the X-ray of his skull, and Gill’s renderings of Freud’s collection of antiquities on his desk. Gill says Freud often assigned personalities to the figurines. “New acquisitions went on holidays with him and sat at the dinner table with his family.”
Flavell’s work reflects on his collection of fine rugs, inspiring her own “stream of consciousness rug”, and created ceramic Freudian dogs. She says Freud was very sentimental about his dogs. “His daughter used to write him poems for his birthday from the dogs.”
Dupont came through Germany on her way to London, photographing the Black Forest where Hitler went on holidays. In the Freud family photo albums she found pictures of the mountain she’d just visited, not knowing it was also where the Freud family went on holiday. Her eerie images of the landscape include Roman ruins — a Freud obsession.
A projection by Kelleher shows a barely moving male figure curled up in the study referencing a portrait by Dali depicting Freud with a snail’s head. Nicholls says it took some convincing to allow them to film a naked male model in the study. “In the end the museum were really supportive”.
The exhibition will tour and the artists are raising funds on the Pozible website, under the banner “crowdfreuding”.
Freud, born into a Jewish family from Bohemia, fled Austria with his family, arriving in London in 1938, and died the following year. His youngest daughter Anna, who pioneered the field of child psychoanalysis, continued to live in the family home in Hampstead until her death in 1982. It was her wish that the home become a museum to honour her father.
Nicholls says the study is such a choreographed space, with everything carefully selected and placed by Freud, that it feels like a stage set.
“I thought it would feel quite eerie but it was the opposite — it felt so warm and comforting and inviting. There was no sense of the macabre to it at all.”
An Internal Difficulty: Australian Artists at the Freud Museum London is at PICA until April 15. A free curator talk takes place at 6pm on March 24.
