Freud Museum London

6 March 2013 - 26 May 2013
Rebecca Fortnum
Self Contained

“.. only where I find a face do I encounter an exteriority and does an outside happen to me.” G. Agamben, Means without End, Notes on Politics (2000)

Rebecca Fortnum’s exhibition at the Freud Museum, 'Self Contained', develops several strands of her recent work on the formation of identity, dreams and the power of the gaze.

The series 'Dream' depicts children with their eyes closed in paired pencil portraits. In these small, intimate works we can look at the subjects very closely but they never look back. No blinking, no flinching; we are struck by their interiority. They shut out the intrusive viewer. The imagery responds directly to notions of the power relations of the subject’s gaze, introducing on a suggestive level the ideal of the child’s dreams and imaginings that are inaccessible to the viewer. The portraits are completed in pairs in a process developed to question the authenticity of the single image. These works will be displayed in Anna Freud’s room at the Freud Museum, along with works in silverpoint, to draw out connections with Anna Freud’s writings on the child’s relationship with the adult world.

The series 'Wide Shut' includes three large paired portraits, each with a veil of colour over the image. These are of older girls, one image of each pair with open eyes. They act out the duality of proper and improper, of communication and communicability, of potentiality and action.

Fortnum is also exhibiting a series of letterpress works that use text fragments extracted from the governess’ monologue in 'Turn of the Screw' by Henry James. These are printed by hand, making the words materially present and isolating them from the story. The texts have been selected for the way they demonstrate the governess’ use of self-narration to form her identity. It has been suggested that Freud’s The Case of Miss Lucy R was used by James as a basis for his chilling tale.

A book to accompany the exhibition will be published by RGAP, designed by Colin Sackett with essays by Graham Music and Louisa Minkin. The exhibition and publication have been supported by CCW Graduate School Research Committee, University of the Arts London and The Arts Council of England.

Rebecca Fortnum is an artist and researcher. Awards include the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the British Council, the Arts Council of England, the British School in Rome, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and the OPAK Research Council of Flemish Universities. Her book Contemporary British Women Artists; in their own words was published by IB Tauris/Macmillan in 2007. A recent project has been with the V&A's Museum of Childhood, London where she held a solo show of drawings Absurd Impositions and curated a group exhibition, The Imagination of Children, within the Museum’s collection. In 2012 she concluded a year-long research project, Drawing - in and outside - Writing, a collaboration with 3 other artists and published an artists' book with RGAP, as well as a cahier of the same name published by Acco Uitgeverij, Belgium. She is Reader of Fine Art at the CCW Graduate School, University of the Arts London.

Where

The Freud Museum

Admission

Adults: £6.00
Senior Citizens: £4.50
Concessions: £3.00 (Students with valid ID cards, children aged 12-16, UK unemployed persons - with proof, disabled persons).
Children under 12: Free

Website

http://www.freud.org.uk

Ortega is well known for his sculptures, installations, videos, photographs and actions. Mundane objects feature prominently, from golf balls and pick-axes to bricks, rubbish bins and even tortillas – all subjected to what has been described as Ortega’s characteristic “mischievous process of transformation and dysfunction”.

The artist was invited to visit the Gashaka region in Nigeria: one of the last remaining wildernesses in West Africa, where the rarest subspecies of chimpanzees survives and where the Gashaka Primate Project has its base. By taking an artist to the wilderness, bridges and boundaries between art and science are instinctively created. This exhibition explores these divisions and their transgressions through the work of Ortega. Unlike a dissecting and objectifying scientist, an artist will be able to contextualize the sensitivities of our natural and cultural side in a more nuanced, private and subjectified way – thus honouring Freud’s idea that our psyche is at the heart of our existence.

Admission

Adults: £6.00
Senior Citizens: £4.50
Concessions: £3.00 (Students with valid ID cards, children aged 12-16, UK unemployed persons - with proof, disabled persons).
Children under 12: Free

Website

http://www.freud.org.uk/exhibitions/75095/apestraction/

Allen Frances MD was the Chair of the Task Force that prepared the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), often called the bible of the American psychiatric profession. However, he has been a vocal critic of the new DSM V, condemning what he calls its diagnostic hyperinflation. His new book, Saving Normal, is part mea culpa, part j‘accuse, and part cri de coeur. It explores why psychiatry has always been subject to so many fads, while deploring the medicalization of everyday human experience and the excessive use of psychiatric medicine.

In the prestigious Freud Memorial Lecture, Dr Frances argues that the current under-estimation of Freud is in part the price for his having been overestimated during his lifetime. ‘It is unwise to worship Freud or the DSM as bibles - but equally unwise not to know them,’ he says. His lecture will draw attention to which of Freud's contributions he thinks still relevant, which quaint historical artefacts.

A graduate of the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Center, where he taught the Freud course for ten years, Allen Francis is now Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University, where previously he was Chair.

Convenor: Lisa Appignanesi, Chair of the Freud Museum and visiting Professor in Literature and the Medical Humanities, Kings College London.

Suitable for

When

7:30-8:30pm

Admission

£14/£10 concessions and Members of the Freud Museum

King's College Students please email eventsandmedia@freud.org.uk

Advance booking is highly recommended

Venue: Edmond J Safra Theatre, King's College London, The Strand, London, WC2R 2LS

Cinema’s enfant terrible Lars Von Trier explores the American way of life in Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005): films shot on minimal sets contrasting with intense subject matters. We follow Grace Mulligan, played first by Nicole Kidman and then by Bryce Dallas Howard, in these compelling studies of sociology, ethics and human brutality. In her Projections lecture, Mary Wild offers a Freudian psychoanalytic interpretation of the struggle between unconscious desires and authoritarian figures in the Danish filmmaker’s ‘Land of Opportunities’ series.

PROJECTIONS is psychoanalysis for film interpretation. PROJECTIONS empowers film spectators to express subjective associations they consider to be meaningful. Expertise in psychoanalytic theory is not necessary - the only prerequisite is the desire to enter and inhabit the imaginary world of film, which is itself a psychoanalytic act. Please watch Lars Von Trier’s ‘Dogville’ and ‘Manderlay’ before attending the lecture as there may be spoilers! MARY WILD, a Freudian cinephile from Montreal, is the creator of PROJECTIONS.

This is the third in a series of three monthly PROJECTIONS lectures at The Freud Museum in 2013.

Advance booking highly recommended

For further information contact eventsandmedia@freud.org.uk or +44 (0)20 7435 2002

Ticket cancellation policy: Please note we are unable to refund tickets, or transfer the booking to another talk, less than 48 hours before the event.

Please note: As per our green policy, we do not issue paper tickets. Once you book online, you will receive an email confirmation and will be add to the guest list. If you have any questions please contact Gary Hetherington, gary@freud.org.uk.

This event takes places on the first floor. We regret that we do not currently have a lift to this floor or an accessible toilet.

There are 22 stairs, made up of 16 steps followed by a half landing, then a further 5 steps. Front of house staff are on hand to support you as far as possible. We aim to record all events. These can be downloaded free of charge via our iTunes page.

Suitable for

• 18+

When

7-9am

Three of our most distinguished contemporary poets in conversations with psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, exploring themes of trauma, loss and recovery in their work.

Bernard O’Donoghue
in conversation with David Morgan

Sam Willetts
in conversation with Gerry Byrne

Jane Draycott
in conversation with Caroline Garland

When

9:30am-4:30pm

Where

Freud Museum
20 Maresfield Gardens
London
NW3 5SX

Admission

£60 Full Price / £45 Students and concessions
(£5 discount for members of the Freud Museum)

For further information contact eventsandmedia@freud.org.uk or +44 (0)20 7435 2002

Website

http://www.freud.org.uk/events/75110/psychoanalytic-poetry-festival-/

10 week evening class

This course examines the tradition of erotic love in Western philosophy, touching on anthropology, literature and neuroscience.

We will look at successive theories of love, from Plato to the present, and the changing notions, so germane to these, about what it is to be a human, and to be a man or a woman. Erotic love is full of contradictions – earthy and gross yet transcendent and spiritual, wild yet exclusive, natural yet artificial, spontaneous and conventional – but so many theories on it fail to do justice to its paradoxical nature. They avoid not only the soul and the genitals, but even the person who is the object of love. We will try and do better.

The ten week course being held on Thursday evenings at the Freud Museum London from 25 April until 4 July (no class 6 June), 6.30pm – 8.30pm.

No prior knowledge will be assumed and you will be guided by an experienced tutor with many years’ teaching experience.

Suitable for

Admission

£140, £110 Members of the Museum, £90 student/unemployed

Advance booking essential