Freya is a multi-disciplinary artist with a BA Sculpture from Chelsea College of Art and an MA Sculpture from the Royal College of Art.
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Her practice is research-based and site-responsive and often takes histories, communities and environments as a starting point, working in conversation with different contexts and places, and employing unorthodox materials that speak to the specificity of each project. ​​
The work explores individual and collective identity through strategies that expose the often overlooked exchanges with our surrounding environments - these subtly reflecting our societal values, beliefs and aspirations. By drawing out unnoticed narratives embedded within objects and situations, the familiar is transformed, highlighting the different ways we manifest, control or define our histories or present societies, and giving space for alternative, quieter voices to be heard.
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Occupying the threshold between poetry, documentary, the surreal and the conceptual, the work attempts to sensitively highlight the paradoxes, injustices and enigmas at play in our social and political worlds, offering a new perspective to negotiate our own fragile position in a shifting world, while posing questions about how things may be done differently.
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She regularly works collaboratively with a wide spectrum of individuals and communities both in the UK and abroad. In 2021she spent three months working alongside different communities on the US/Mexico border for the project ‘Duet', collaborating with gardeners, engineers, factory workers, migrants, charities, and people detained within the federal prison system. In 2024 Freya collaborated with social historians, Karnataka fruit sellers and Ayurvedic botanists in Bengaluru, India, to create a body of work in response to Lalbagh Botanic Garden, with an exploration of post-colonialism, ecology and place.
Freya has spent the last four years as artist-in-residence at University College London developing her commission to make three permanent public artworks for a the DRI, a new pioneering Research Centre for dementia. This commission, ‘Underflow’ explores the subterranean River Fleet materially and conceptually with archeologists, geologists, AI developers and neurologists to reveal this body of water in new guises, reflecting ideas of time, memory, connection, transformation, renewal, and exchange.
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"Making for me, means re imagining - turning something inside out, upside down, breaking it apart to look at it again, pushing it off kilter so that it holds itself differently or sings a new song. I often use objects and materials already in the world - things we have instinctive associations with - by abstracting, disrupting or destabilising them, I'm hoping to reveal other, quieter truths which can tell a new story of who we are, and who we want to be"
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AWARDS AND PRIZES
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2022 Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, (Shortlist)
2020 Arts Council Covid Emergency Fund
2017 Artangel ‘Everywhere’ (Shortlisted – 1 of 8)
2017 Mark Tanner Sculpture Award, (Shortlisted)
2017 British School in Rome Bridget Riley Fellowship (Drawing) Shortlist
2015 Neo Art Prize, Residency and Solo Exhibition (Awarded)
2015 Griffin Gallery Open, Griffin Gallery, London (Finalist)
2015 Combat Art Prize, Livorno, Italy (Awarded)
2014 Uncertain States, Four Corners Gallery (Awarded)
2014 Jerwood Drawing Prize, (Shortlisted)
2014 David Troostwyk / Matts Gallery award (Finalist) Selected by Susan Hiller and Robin Klassnik
2014 Awarded Royal College of Art Bursary Scheme (Awarded)
2013 Awarded Royal College of Art Bursary Scheme (Awarded)
2013 Awarded Eaton Award Bursary (Awarded)
2012 Gilchrist Fisher Landscape Award (Awarded)
2009 The Open West Prize (Shortlisted)
2008 Artsway 08 Artsway, Sway, (Finalist)
2008 Darbyshire Award Shortlist Exhibition (Finalist)
2007 Salon 07 Short-list Exhibition (Shortlist)
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PUBLIC COMMISSIONS
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2025 'Pile Up' Art Work Exeter, Exeter Customs House, UK
2024/2025 'Market Garden' Old Diorama Arts Centre, London UK
2021 ‘All Fired Up’ Historic England, Stoke on Trent / Poole, UK
2020 ‘Underflow’ UCL Public commission Site History London UK
2020 ‘Contagious Image’ Burton Museum and Art Gallery Bideford UK
2018 ‘Atlas’ Eriksburg Museum, Tranas, Sweden
2018 ‘Avenue’ Châteaux De Bosmolet, Diep-Haven Festival 2018 France
2017 ‘Grafted Chorus’ Future Perfect, Bristol, UK
2014 ‘Swansong; Dawn till Dusk’ D.I.G Collective, London, UK
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SELECTED FUNDED INTERNATIONAL RESIDENCIES/PROJECTS
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2024 The Silence of Growing Things, Bangalore, India
2023 Action Space, collaboration with Artist Matthew Berry, UK
2022 Duet El Paso, Texas, USA / Ciudad Juarez Mexico
2019 Leonardo Da Vinci, A life in Drawing Artist, Bristol Museum, UK
2018 Offcut Artist residency/exhibition, Palsmuseum, Tranas, Sweden
2018 Raw Materials: Textiles, The Nunnery Gallery, London, UK
2017 IMR Artist in Residence aboard Dr Fridtjof Nansen Vessel, Namibia and South Africa
2017 USF Art Centre, Bergen, Norway
2016 Doremi, Florence Art Centre and Iron Mine, Cumbria, UK
2016 Neo Artist Residency, Bolton, UK
2015 108 Artist Residency, New York, USA
2015 Fljótstunga Artist Residency, Iceland
2015 DepARTure Foundation, London, UK
2013 Intern Fellowship, Franconia Sculpture Park, Minnesota, USA
2011 Artist in Residence/ solo exhibition, Styx Projects, Berlin, Germany
2009 Artist in Residence / solo exhibition, Meantime Space Cheltenham, UK
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SOLO EXHIBITIONS
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​2025 'Cold Frame' Milton Gallery, London, UK
2024 ‘Duet’ Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London UK
2023 ‘Monuments’ M2 Gallery, London, UK
2022 ‘Duet’ BAR, El Paso, Texas, USA
2020 ‘Contagious Image’ Burton Gallery and Museum, Bideford, UK
2018 ‘Hold The Line’ Project Launch. Danielle Arnaud, London, UK
2016 ‘Everything Must Go’ Neo, Bolton, UK
2016 ‘Quickly, Quietly’ 9B Projects, London, UK
2014 'Dawn till Dusk – Swan Song’ Dig Collective, London, UK
2011 ‘Undone.Retold’ Styx Projects, Berlin, Germany
2010 ‘Vestige’ an installation in an empty tower block flat, Glasgow, UK
2009 ‘Desirelines’ Meantime Space, Cheltenham, UK
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SELECTED GROUP SHOWS
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2025 ‘Pile Up’ two man show with Louise Ashcroft, Exeter Customs House, UK
2025 ‘Residency Reminiscence’ Artcore, Derby UK
2025 ‘Everything is Connected’ UCL Public Art, Craft Council, London UK
2024 'Arcade' Canopy Collections, London, UK
2024 'Coastal Currents' Hastings, Coastal Currents Arts Festival, Hastings, UK
2024 'The Silence of Growing Things' Artcore, Derby, UK
2024 'THISS 2024' The Hide, Stroud, UK
2024 'Trig Point' Millimetre Gallery Kingsgate Workshops London, UK
2023 ‘Secret Postcard’ RWA Bristol UK
2023 ‘Between Land and Sky’ SVA, Periscope Arts, Stroud, UK
2023 ‘Hung, Drawn & Quartered’ The Prick and Stitch Collective, Standpoint Gallery, London, UK
2022 ‘Trinity Wharf Drawing Prize’ Touring Exhibition, UK
2020 '25 Years' Danielle Arnaud, London UK
2019 ‘Gossip’ Take Courage, New Cross, London
2019 ‘The London Art Fair’ Danielle Arnaud Contemporary, London UK
2018 ‘OFFCUT’ Eriksburg Museum, Tranas, Sweden
2018 ‘Contre Point 1: Still life’, Auffey, France
2018 ‘Raw Materials; Textiles, Nunnery Gallery / Vallance House, London, UK
2018 ‘Say no more’ http://www.isthisitisthisit.com/say-no-more
2017 ‘ Air; Visualising the invisible in British Art 1768-2017’ RWA, Bristol, UK
2017 ‘A Bird in the Head’ Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London, UK
2017 ‘Hanger 1’ Charity Art Auction for Refugees, Berlin, Germany
2017 ‘This is where we fall’ Thames Side Gallery, London, UK
2016 ‘The Surround X Seen Through’ Avarard Hotel, Slate Projects London, UK
2016 ‘Spectrum’ PS Mirabel, Manchester, UK
2015 ‘Things I Know, Things I Don’t Know’ 108, New York, USA
2015 ‘Tendencies’ Mo.e Contemporary, Vienna, Austria
2015 ‘Sketchy Remarks’ DepARTure Foundation, London, UK
2014 ‘Echo’ The Function Room, London, UK
2014 ‘Spun Through Shadows’ Collaboration with Composer Nick Morrish and Another Dance Company, London, UK
2014 ‘Hole Story’ D.I.G Collective, Hackney, London UK
2014 ‘Works on Paper’ Meantime Projects. Cheltenham, UK
2014 ‘Royal College of Art Degree Show’ Sculpture RCA. London, UK
2014 ‘RCA Secret’ Dyson Gallery, London, UK
2013 ‘Workweek’ Casket Gallery, Minneapolis, USA
2013 ‘RCA Secret’ Dyson Gallery, London, UK
2013 ‘Extra-Ordinary’ Departure Foundation, Glassford Street, London, UK
2013 ‘Royal College of Art WIP Show’ Henry Moore Gallery London, UK
2012 ‘Middleland – Responses to Drawing’ 22 Gas Street, Birmingham, UK
2012 ‘Wanted’ Drawing Show, RCA London, UK
2012 ‘Smashed Plates and Seascapes’ The Cove, Lamorna, Cornwall, UK
2011 ‘One thing leads to another’ Portland House, Malvern, UK
2011 ‘Episode 2: Ghost in the machine’ The Others Gallery. London, UK
2011 ‘Wallpaper Collective:8 Folds’ Richmix Gallery. London, UK
2011 ‘Cellspace’ exhibition with Nicola Stead, Styx Projects, London, UK
2010 ‘At Play’ South Hill Park, Bracknel, UK
2009 ‘Archway Island Group Show’ Archway Methodist Church, London, UK
2008 ‘Siteshow’ 31 Warwick Square, London, UK
2007 ‘Seduced’ The Windows Gallery (In association with the Barbican) London, UK
2006 ‘Slightly off centre’ St Pancras Church Crypt, London, UK
2006 ‘This way up’ Temporary Contemporary. London,
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