‘Jane McAdam Freud Object’

P. 8 ‘Jane McAdam Freud’s everyday encounters with objects in her surroundings, and around her studios, constantly inspire her. She says that finding these things is typically an unconscious process. They jump out at her, as a ‘happening’. Nothing is what it seems, but Jane sees lots of potential in them. McAdam Freud tells me “I intend for the works to ‘speak’ from their history - as objects -, perhaps in the way that Sigmund Freud intended for his beloved collection of ancient sculpture when he said ‘Stone Speak…Also, I am interested in the object’s status as pseudo instructor with its unspoken command, rather like with Alice in Wonderland” Then she’ll spend hours bringing these objects together or deconstructing and re-placing the reconfigured parts in ways to make them ‘speak’

P. 9 McAdam Freud says, “I wanted to be instructed directly by these, to say Sit, Stand, Look etc.” She worked with the materials, as much as she worked with her subliminal feelings. Following in the footsteps, and questions, of her great-grandfather, the inventor of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, McAdam Freud’s work is teeming with conceptual, psychoanalytical perceptions & thought(s). She processes the material. On an unconscious level, we discover theRE are two ways of conceiving a ‘thing’; one through the word for it (word presentation) and one through the image of it, which Sigmund Freud called ‘thing presentation’.” Thus, the objects in her sculpture are loaded with implication, consequence and worth, for/from the unconscious. They have an unswerving signature aesthetic - an aide-memoir- that these aren’t just piles of junk, but the articulate paradigms of a confident creative intellect, whose metaphorical meanings of association defy explanation, sentimentality, reverence andvalue. Disentangling all esoteric meaning means not everything accepts ‘meaning’. And not everything is (il)legible, as we, the viewer, make art ‘art’ by looking at it; it needs us, values our imagination and our ideas. Together, forming part of a conversation, or a story, that arouses.