1 January - 3 February
FRONT, BACK, AND FELTDARK

zoe freney
summer residency

Using painting, drawing and textiles I explore experiences that may otherwise be considered unrepresentable, yet embedded within the banality of the everyday. I’m interested in the mysterious contours of our inner worlds, looking beyond the interiority of the domestic and its powerful creative potential to mine dreams, and to map universes of the imagination.

I’m interested in the ways artists who are also mothers explore experiences that may otherwise be considered unrepresentable, incommensurable, beneath and within the banality of the everyday.

French theorist Julia Kristeva argues that women’s (and mothers’) creative potential has been denigrated and overlooked throughout western art history, as avant-garde invention has been cast as masculine. In this residency period I will make work that repositions maternal responses and creative positions, conducting an investigation into my own inner world, mining dreams and memory for imagery and inspiration.

In my research and practices of mothering I have come to realise that the everyday is not that far from dreaming after all. The walls between worlds are porous. This understanding opens a path for exploring surrealist and avant-garde possibilities, something mother-artists discover in each generation. Using processes including textiles, garment construction, movement and meditation practices, drawing and painting, I make intensely personal work in FeltSpace gallery, a room of one’s own with a window to the city street. There are political implications of making the private public in this way, as I continue to advocate for the creative potential of the interior and domestic worlds of mothers, carers and their dependents.

Artist Biography

Zoe Freney is an artist, writer and academic. She is Coordinator BVA and BVA (Honours) at Adelaide Central School of Art. Zoe's work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and prizes. Her work Self with beluga (after Da Vinci) won the Prospect Portrait Prize in 2021. Her work has been selected as a semi-finalist in the Moran Prize, and finalist in the Heysen Prize, Tatiara Prize and Fleurieu Biennale Art Prize. Her work has been shown internationally at Spilt Milk Gallery in Scotland, the Stay Home Gallery in Tennessee and the Pearl Conard Gallery in Ohio. Zoe has also been widely published in a range of art journals and online writing platforms including Artlink and fine print.