As part of her ongoing residency in the Visual Arts department at West Dean College, Freya Pocklington gave a talk about her work to the full-time students and a number of guests. Freya gave a chronological account of how her practice had developed over the years, before going on to explain her intentions for the three-week residency. Having been brought up in the Lake District, Freya first spoke of how her father's antiques dealing meant that she was always surrounded by interesting objects (including ubiquitous Spode pottery) that instilled in her an enduring appreciation for craft, hand skills, the art of repair and so on. Another notable exposures to art included seeing David Hockney's etchings for the sets of The Rake's Progress at Salt's Mill in Saltaire, West Yorkshire, a series that underlined Hockney's ability to shift styles throughout his career, adapting his approach according to different concerns yet maintaining a constant focus on the importance and adaptability of drawing.
David Hockney - The Gospel Singing (Good People) Madison Sq., 1961-1963 from the portfolio "A Rake's Progress: A Graphic Tale Comprising Sixteen Etchings 1961 to 1963", 12 1/3 x 15 7/8 inches, 65.325.06, © David Hockney, Inc.[/caption]
Freya soon went on to study Fine Art at Edinburgh College of
Art, chosen for its emphasis on teaching traditional and
experimental drawing skills. It was during this time, although late
in her degree, that Freya began to sharpen focus on her own line of
inquiry founded on an interest in working with archives and
collections. After making a trip to Florence and spending much of
her time at 'La Specola', a Museum of Zoology and Natural History
(the oldest scientific museum in Europe, first opened to the public
in 1775), Freya had absorbed the influence of the collection of
anatomical waxworks, particularly the animal specimens, leading to
a fascination for stuffed animals and taxidermy (especially its
frequent misrepresentations). Subsequent compositions not only
developed characters and caricatures from such objects, but also
from the spectacle of museum-goers idling around the cabinets of
curiosity.
Soon after this Freya began using conté crayon, developing the
vibrant palette that would become a feature of her work. As well as
pointing out the importance of triangular relationships throughout
almost all of her compositions, Freya talked a little bit about the
process of building up layers of pencil or charcoal drawing,
various washes of ink, then further layers of pastel (Fabriano
paper and Sennelier pastels being tools of the trade). This
interest in intense colour was also confirmed during a particular
residency in Portugal, undertaken after her graduation and
following a brief break from art making, where a nearby sulphur
mine exposed a bizarre and unsettling landscape of lurid colour,
with the powdery, pigmented scene strangely prescient in relation
to the textures and hues in many of Freya's later works. Housed in
an historic 400-year-old Franciscan monastery, the
artist-in-residence programme at the Convento São
Francisco de Mértola (founded in 1980 by Kees and Geraldine
Zwanikken) soon led to Freya completing a series of portraits
involving representations of objects associated with known
individuals. Following this resurgence, Freya undertook an MA at
Wimbledon, developing predominately animation-based work under the
tutelage of Jordan Baseman. Other residencies followed, both at
West Dean College and in association with the Florence Trust, and
Freya's work became increasingly commercially successful. During
the talk, Freya was open and generous with advice for the listening
students, emphasising the importance of professional practice, such
as making sure that basic things such as high quality
documentation, the value of framing work, as well as the realities
of (and necessity for) self-promotion. The ups and downs of gallery
representation were also discussed - an invaluable insight into
personal experience that the students could all relate to.
Freya Pocklington at work during residency at Somerset House[/caption]
After going on to describe the importance of supplementing her practice with teaching - particularly working with children in healthcare, notably at Great Ormand Street Hospital - as well as working in collaboration with artists such as Rachel Simm, Freya described how a period of prolonged illness meant that she had to spend a lot of time indoors, often confined to her room, creating various difficulties in terms of making new work. The difficulties of this period perhaps inevitably started to come through, both in the subject matter and tone of many new compositions, perhaps referencing aspects of the work of Frida Kahlo, another artist for whom themes of autobiography and trauma would always provide material with which to work. A similar intensity of the gaze, albeit laced with wry humour, comes through in many of Freya's pieces during this time.
The restrictions also had a productive impact, however, not least the development of a new strategy for using images and stories found on the internet as starting points for new compositions. The strangeness of some of these resources would feed directly into the fantasy worlds created in the pastel and ink drawings: odd tales involving menageries of humans as well as animals, surreal landscapes, occurrences of modern technology colliding with 'primitive' cultures, and so on. With the artist no longer able to travel, technology provided a way for exotic climes and a whole slew of 'otherness' to be introduced to the work.
Freya ended the talk by outlining her ongoing research interests in the role of animals in healthcare and recovery, again describing the general context of a crossover between art making and medicine that continues to inform her work and to suggest new territories into which it can move.
More information about Freya's work and the West Dean residency can be found via Twitter and Instagram
