Honor Freeman is an Adelaide based artist who has been exhibiting since 2000, an alumni of JamFactory’s Associate program in the Ceramic Studio, she completed her studies in 2001 at the South Australian School of Art. Her work has been curated into major exhibitions at institutions throughout Australia, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, and Samstag Museum. She has undertaken international residencies at Guldagergaard, Denmark and in the US at Indiana University. Freeman’s work is held in important public collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia, ArtBank and Washington DC’s National Musuem of Women in the Arts.
Ordinary Alchemy continues my preoccupation with the minutiae of the everyday ordinariness of life, banal objects that we know intimately. These collections convey ideas of material transformation. The careful transmutation of common, unremarkable domestic objects into sculptures that belie their materiality and purpose.
Clay too is a humble and democratic material: it comes from the earth and has been shaped and formed by human hands for time immemorial. Add fire, and this magic alchemy gives rise to pottery and ceramics.
Working primarily in porcelain, I harness the mimetic qualities inherent in clay through the magic of slip casting. The works playfully interact with ideas of liquid made solid. The porcelain casts echo the original objects; the liquid slip turns solid forming a skin, and becomes a precise memory of a past form. A ghost.
Honor Freeman, 2017
