Alice Anderson
dal 13/4/2011 al 4/6/2011
Segnalato da
13/4/2011
Alice Anderson
The Freud Museum, London
In Alice Anderson's Childhood Rituals, Anderson deliberately draws out the fact that the building was Anna Freud's home. She promotes a dialogue with her life and work, thereby taking the focus away from her father. Anna's loom has never before been a major centrepiece of an exhibition at the Museum.
curated by Joanna Walker
Alice Anderson’s new sculpture ties-up the Freud Museum using thousands of metres of red dolls hair.
Alice Anderson's Childhood Rituals is a new exhibition of sculptures by the French-British artist Alice Anderson, which will be shown at the Freud Museum London from 15 April-5 June 2011. Thousands of metres of dolls hair will be tied around the exterior of the museum in response to her Fictional Childhood Memories – a series of performances she began in 2010.
“I remember the terrible fears I used to have when I was a child left alone at home for many long hours waiting for the return of my mother. At that time I invented rituals for myself to calm my anxieties. These rituals consisted of undoing the thread from seams and I wound these threads around parts of my body and other objects. This obsession became so bad that I started to do the same thing using my hair.”
Inside the museum, Anderson presents a series of new sculptures, including Power Figures, a series of fetish-like new sculptures made from dolls hair and ginger thread wound around her personal objects. Two identical wax dolls, based on the artist’s image, evoke a Machiavellian Mother-Daughter relationship. The Mother Doll is seated at the loom weaving a grid for her Daughter from synthetic hair.
Anderson uses synthetic hair to evoke thread, string, webs and weaving. The dolls hair has a special significance for the artist, connecting her to people and memories. It is colour-matched to her own red hair, inherited from her English Father. In this context of psychoanalysis, it functions as a symbol of the maternal bond.
In Alice Anderson’s Childhood Rituals, Anderson deliberately draws out the fact that the building was Anna Freud’s home. She promotes a dialogue with her life and work, thereby taking the focus away from her father. Anna’s loom has never before been a major centrepiece of an exhibition at the Museum.
For the first time ever, special permission has been given for the façade of the Freud Museum to be part of a site-specific sculpture. The flowing skeins of hair will be woven around the exterior of the house using the same creative process as adopted in Anderson’s Power Figures.
Related Resources
The exhibition is curated by Joanna Walker and is made possible by the generous support of the National Lottery through Arts Council England, with additional assistance from the Agnes b Endowment Fund.
The show will be accompanied by a full-colour catalogue, with essays on Anderson’s work by Catherine Grenier (Head of Centre Georges Pompidou), and Griselda Pollock (CentreCATH), Leeds University and will include a conversation between curator Joanna Walker and the artist.
Private view 14th April 6.30 - 8.30 pm
The Freud Museum
20 Maresfield Gardens, London NW3 5SX
Opening Hours: Wednesday to Sunday 12 - 17
Admission Charges
Adults: £6.00
Senior Citizens: £4.50
Concessions £3.00 (Students with valid ID cards, children aged 12-16, unemployed persons, disabled persons.
Children under 12: Free