Martha Freud, In Other Words
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Therapy is watching Martha Freud play with clay.
Dressed in black coveralls, her long dark hair pushed back, she flattens a hunk of clay with a rolling pin, carves it into a flat square and then turns to the leftover bits, shaping them into a little bowl, and tiny napkins and plates. All the while she chats about her work, her two young kids, and the challenges of growing up in a wordy, artistic — and over-achieving — family.
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Who needs the psychoanalysis when Martha’s in the house?
Here, at the back of the Nonemore Gallery in London’s Fitzrovia, which is hosting Freud’s first show in 10 years, there is no sofa for free association, just Martha and her lumps of clay, a table, stools and a wall filled with little artworks from her regular Thursday evening “Nights on the Tiles” events.
She’s been inviting people to view the show and then sit down and design their own clay tiles and she later fires them in her kiln. Some are hanging now on a back wall of the gallery, waiting to be picked up by those who made them.
Freud — a great-great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and part of a famous clan that includes Lucian, Clement (Martha’s grandfather), Bella, Esther and Emma Freud — was eager to have people interact after so many lockdowns.
“The social anxiety was real, so I wanted this table, this space where people could sit and make something and share an experience,” says Martha Freud, a self-taught ceramicist.
It is a gray winter afternoon, and she’s rolling that clay just a few feet away from the delicate porcelain plates, pots, cups and boxes that make up her “Mixed Messages” exhibition. The ceramics are inscribed with clever plays on words, cheeky phrases, lyrics or clichés.
“I licked it so it’s mine,” says one plate, while a collection of fragile pots stacked in the grid of a large oak box light up to reveal phrases such as “I am done being a people pleaser — is that OK with everyone,” “Love is boundaries” and “We are all alone in this together.”
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There are “rubble plates,” too, made from bits of broken pottery (“It makes the breaking process more bearable,” she says) and lush, rounded teapots in various shapes and sizes. They are inscribed with post-modern interpretations of the “I’m a Little Teapot” lyrics, such as “I Define Me” and “My Body, My Labels.”
Freud said the art in the show was inspired partly by the whittled-down conversations people were having during lockdown, tossing single words back and forth over text — or communicating, in part, with symbols.
The exhibition is fun, and a fusion of ancient tradition and tech (software powers the word sequences on the pots, or makes groups of pots light up and snake around the grid).
Mostly, though, “Mixed Messages” marks Freud’s return to the public eye after eight years of quiet work on private commissions — the Firmdale hotels are filled with her lamps and other installations — while she cared for her two young children.
In addition to the gallery show, she’s about to launch her first, limited-edition homeware collection in April with a company called 1882, which produces the pieces in Stoke-on-Trent, England, the center of the country’s china manufacturing industry.
The 16-piece collection of candles and plates serve up humor similar to that of her gallery pieces: “Do not eat off the art” warns a mustard-colored porcelain platter. “I run a tight shipwreck,” says a porcelain bowl. They’ll make their debut at The Conran Shop in London.
While word plays may be central to this show, it’s clear that Freud finds great comfort in the non-verbal adventure that is ceramic making.
“There is so much you can do with it, it is limitless — and yet it knows its boundaries. If you don’t dry it out properly, it will explode in the kiln. If you don’t follow rules, it won’t play. There is something quite satisfying about knowing your limits, and then exploring and challenging them,” she says.
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Freud also likes the idea of relinquishing control. “You can work with all this intent, but the outcome is not entirely up to you and so you sometimes you need to start again. It’s about enjoying the journey rather than being fixed on the end result. I’m not fully in control.”
Freud, who studied furniture and product design at Kingston University, later took a string of adult education courses – in things like welding and ceramics. She became “obsessed” with ceramics and pursued it in earnest after buying a kiln off eBay.
She opened her studio in London in 2008 and has mostly been working from home for the past eight years as she raised her children along with her partner Adam Smith, an award-winning film, documentary and video director who works closely with the Chemical Brothers.
It’s a good thing she obsessed on ceramics. Painting — much as she loves it — was never going to be an option, given that Lucian Freud, one of England’s most famous 20th-century painters, was her great uncle.
“I loved painting at school, but I would have never pursued a career in it. It felt like it was off-limits. I still enjoy it as a hobby, but I needed a way of expressing my creativity with something that hadn’t been done before.”
Asked about her next show, Freud said she plans to steer clear of words and focus instead on nature and the natural form.
“After having had this kind of word frenzy, I’m going back to a form-based thing,” says Freud, her hands gray and sticky with clay. “I think I want to call it ‘A Loss for Words.’”
Now that will be a challenge.
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