Jane McAdam Freud: An Absent Presence: A RETROSPECTIVE IN DIALOGUE WITH LOUISE BOURGEOIS AND HOLLY STEVENSON

Jane McAdam Freud (1958–2022) dedicated her creative output to the exploration of life, death and the libido. This exhibition, the first of her work since her untimely passing in 2022, presents key pieces from across her career. It seeks to unlock the poignancy and power of the art object, and showcases how Jane, in a rich variety of media and with idiosyncratic humour, used the physical to express the immaterial. As the greatgranddaughter of Sigmund Freud and daughter of Lucian Freud, an unflinching analysis of the self remained a constant across her art.

In a spirit of dialogue across time and between pioneering female artists, An Absent Presence features works by contemporary artist Holly Stevenson (b. 1975), who for a number of years has engaged with psychoanalytic ideas primarily through ceramics, and Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), whose influence was deeply felt by both Jane and Stevenson. The exhibition An Absent Presence at Gazelli Art House connects to a presentation of works by Holly Stevenson and Jane McAdam Freud at Freud Museum, London 14 May–29 June 2025.

An Absent Presence examines Jane’s astute philosophical and psychological approach to art making. It reveals the breadth and technical ability of her practice, expressed through a multitude of medium and scale, from intimate hand-held sculptures to larger-than-life installations. The exhibition seeks to raise questions about the ability of objects to contain and transmit the presence of their maker or owner. 

Jane explained that her works existed in the ether before she gave them form. She described her authorship as being “an absent presence”, stating “it came before me and goes on after me, it doesn’t live and die as flesh does.” The idea that artworks encapsulate and harness a timeless energy was shared with Louise Bourgeois who when speaking about her process said: “Drawings are thought feathers, they are ideas that I seize in mid-flight and put down on paper.”

Bourgeois took the notions of the unconscious and the uncanny from Freudian theory and provocatively channelled them through her highly personal and embodied experiences. An Absent Presence contains works by Bourgeois, such as I Have Been To Hell and Back (2007), that are in dialogue with McAdam Freud and Stevenson through the motifs of clothing and domestic space, the use of word play and a wry reflection on mortality.

Often referring to the cathartic nature of making art as a way to process one’s emotion, Jane differentiated it from therapy. For her, therapy is about “talking it all out”, while art is about “feeling it all out.” Through her bold and varied sculptural practice Jane processed her ancestry, trauma and life experiences through the act of making – her art gave life to her emotions and experiences.

Medal-making was the main artistic pursuit for Jane at the start of her career, and in 1986 she won the British Art Medal Scholarship in Rome where she studied sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma. She adapted this form and pushed its formal properties of double-sidedness, hand-held intimacy, and memorial and ceremonial associations. One such piece, Earth Medal (2011–12) in silver plays on the fact that the word EARTH has ART at its centre.

For Jane, art had always been at the centre of her world, a sensibility inherited from both her artist parents, Katherine McAdam and Lucian Freud. The reverse side of the medal depicts Lucian, made from Jane’s drawings observed at his bedside in the last days of his life. These extremely personal and vulnerable drawings, made with her father’s permission, also form the basis of a much larger sculptural installation Earthstone Triptych (2011), which uses devices of a mirror and a shadow to explore doubling, absence and presence.

A work which further explores the complex relationship between Jane and Lucian is Wax Works/Preserved Matter, comprising a series of wax figures created by father and daughter together in 1990, and preserved since then in a domestic refrigerator in Jane’s studio. Several of these figures were used by Jane as the basis for larger sculptures, such as the lifesize male figure in clay, 1+1 (One Plus One) (2006).

A further key material for Jane was metal chicken wire, notably employed in the 2015 solo exhibition MotherMould at Gazelli Art House. The sculpture Poetic Encounter (2014–15) demonstrates Jane’s approach of placing two objects in dialogue with one another, here abstracted spherical forms reminiscent of a mother and child. Simultaneously fragile and tenacious, the steel mesh alludes to the complexities of the mind, with the shapes reminiscent of a mother’s breast, the earth, and the cyclical nature of life and death. 

Completing the exhibition are pieces in ceramic and wool by Holly Stevenson, made in 2024 in response to Jane’s life and work and the enduring legacy of psychoanalytic theories. The works were first presented as part of the inaugural Freud Artist Residency (F.A.R.) in Příbor, Czech Republic, the birth-place of Sigmund Freud  of the inaugural Freud Artist Residency (F.A.R.) in Příbor, Czech Republic, the birth-place of Sigmund Freud and second home to Jane McAdam Freud. The exhibition was titled Tracing The Irretraceable with Stevenson installing her works alongside Jane’s and reflecting on the act of tracing as both a psychoanalytical and artistic method.

Stevenson was especially influenced by Jane’s self-portraits and depictions of family, which prompted her to make a body of work more explicitly figurative and personal than before. These include Hector Speaks Volumes (2024) which depicts her son in a golden glazed ceramic, with red knitted wool spooling from his mouth. Stevenson, in the footsteps of Jane, questions how artefacts become significant beyond their individual intrinsic beauty or craftsmanship; they hold the remains of the past actions of their makers and owners.