Tracing The Irretraceable
On view from 14 May 2025 to 29 June 2025, Freud Museum London
“Holly was the ideal artist to launch this project; her sensitive yet in-depth response to Jane’s life’s output has been enlightening to witness and resulted in an incredible collection of works and critical discussion on the connection between art and psychoanalysis. Jane would be immensely pleased and proud of the continuation of her life’s study of the subject. This exhibition marks the first since Jane’s passing and celebrates the completion of the inaugural Freud Artist Residency” - Georgia Powell, Curator of the Jane McAdam Freud Estate.
Tracing The Irretraceable is an intimate exhibition looking at the importance of Freudian psychoanalysis to Holly Stevenson in dialogue with the Freud Museum collection and the collection of the late Jane McAdam Freud (1958–2022). The exhibition presents Stevenson’s ceramic sculptures dedicated to reading Freud through his personal collection of objects and reflects on McAdam Freud’s familial approach to the Freud Museum.
Stevenson seeks to reveal how Freud’s interpretation of his stories locked within his own collection have influenced art. Her project In Sigmund Freud’s Ashtray focuses on an object on Sigmund’s desk of unknown origins that was often filled with knick-knacks. The Walking Cure returns to the story of Gradiva, inspired by a Roman bas-relief, which became a Surrealist muse. Her Sculptural method of reading Freud, addressing the comings and goings of repression and eco-feminism through a Freudian lens results in a series of tantalising and humorous ceramic sculptures.
The exhibition marks the completion of the first F.A.R; the Freud Artist Residency established by the Jane McAdam Freud Estate. To find out more about the exhibition, visit the Freud Museum Website.
Holly Stevenson, Sibling Displacement
Self Portrait Bust