Needlework. Courtesy of Freud Museum.
Exhibition Review – Freya McClelland visited Night's Move at London’s Freud Museum which is running until November 23 2008.
Oliver Clegg’s latest show, Night’s Move at London’s Freud Museum, is electrifying and certainly cements his reputation as a young artist with major talent.
The museum in leafy North London is the former home of Sigmund Freud and his daughter, beautifully preserved as living quarters.
Like the other artists exhibited here, Clegg is keen to respect the space; his inspired series of multi-media works are absolutely coherent with the environment.
The theme that runs through the exhibition is ‘play’. In his essay Creative Writers and Daydreaming, Freud argued that the ability to play in childhood is lost under the pressures and necessities of adult life.
That is the role of writers and artists; to re-discover and encourage others to access this essential but forgotten skill. This is Clegg’s starting point.
Lightbulb. Courtesy of Freud Museum.
Adding to the idea of ‘play’, none of Clegg’s works are labelled and blend so subtly with Freud’s own objects that spotting them becomes part of the game. Theory becomes practice.
The first exhibit is an oversized light bulb that dims on a continual cycle hung over a replica of Freud’s desk. It seems to be representing, gently mocking even the process of thinking, and in particular of a great mind. Clegg uses a sense of movement that pulls the viewer in and forces engagement.
Opposite in a glass case copied from another in the house (his attention to detail is meticulous) is a house of Tarok cards. The flux here is hypothetical: any moment the fragile house could fall down. Clegg is interested in the tension between pure aesthetics and a deeper latent anxiety.
By making his focus the analyst at leisure, a less known or understood aspect of his character, Clegg allows us to look at Freud in a fresh light.
Courtesy of Freud Museum.
“I decided it would be more interesting to focus on the humanity or humility of Freud rather than Freud the Legend and the Giant,” he explained.
The house of cards idea is revisited in two etchings in the study. In one of the images the house is falling. Here Clegg emulates Caravaggio’s The Supper at Emmaus and with the precarious fruit bowl perched on the edge of the table, we feel the physical need to lurch and save them.
The accompanying words are taken from the poetry of Heinemann, one of Freud’s favourite writers and like Freud an agnostic Jew. These, and the shadows, further stress the strains of unease and inevitable collapse.
Upstairs in a black room, once Freud’s bedroom, a light shines on the central piece of the exhibition; a spectacular chess board on a replica of Freud’s famous desk.
Superego, Ego & Idsmall. Courtesy of Freud Museum.
The title ‘Nights Move’ comes from Freud’s earliest reference to chess in ‘Studies on Hysteria’ (1893) where he relates the complex, zigzagging move of the Knight to the twists and turns of the human mind in psychoanalysis.
The chess pieces themselves are made from 16 antiquities selected from Freud's collection on show downstairs.
One side of the chessboard has been made to look exactly like the original. The figures are of gods and powerful men reflecting Freud’s fascination with multi-deity cultures and shadowy dream-like spirits.
The other side is produced from the same moulds, therefore keeping exactly the same form, but made from clear resin. These symbolise a more lucid and rational thought. Mid-game, the sensation of incomplete action, momentarily paused, is strongest here.
Clegg regards both as dual aspects of Freud’s own mind. “There is only one chair by the table – it is a one man game, a game that Freud is playing with himself – a personification of the internal dialogue of Freud as he sits at his desk,” he said.
The darkened room adds to the claustrophobic sense of the internal. The impact is both dramatic and powerful.
Russian Dolls. Courtesy of Freud Museum.
In January, the chess piece will move to The Reykjavik Art Museum in a show entitled 32 that will include chess sets by contemporary artists such as Damien Hirst, The Chapman brothers, Maurizio Cattelan, Rachel Whiteread, Gavin Turk, Tracey Emin and other artists who have made chess sets such as Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst.
Clegg admits being thrilled by the extraordinary achievement of being included in this world-class line-up where, at 28, he will be the youngest by at least 10 years.
The next room, which once belonged to Anna Freud the pioneering child psychoanalyst, is by way of contrast, white, airy and more feminine. The room looks as if she had just left it.
Clegg’s multi-faceted skills turn here to the embroidery of flowers on Victorian pillowcases. With no labels, visitors might well imagine that Freud herself made the images. Their delicate beauty is visually striking but not the full story.
Puppet. Courtesy of Freud Museum.
A Victorian flower book tells us the symbolism of the flowers – the buttercup represents childhood. The chosen flowers are all also used to treat depression. The room suddenly appears calm but also clinical or numbed.
Words and crossing-outs reveal an agitated and imperfect mind; they don’t tar the images but instead, highlight the now familiar tension of anguish under surface beauty.
The pillowcases themselves hint of sleep but also the restless and haunting subconscious. A beautiful old volume of unpublished love poems brings to mind the ache of unfulfilled yearning as much as creative thought.
This exhibition is complex and powerful, intelligent and thought provoking. It requires thought and rewards the effort. Oliver Clegg is on the ascent.
