Freddie

We first met Freddie at a magazine launch exhibition at Waste in Hackney. Freddie’s work stood out like a sore thumb in the best way possible. With the great combination of haunting subject matter and skilful craft, Freddie’s work is hard to miss. We needed to know more… So we approached Freddie for an interview.

‘Does this feel invasive?’

‘I feel ambivalent towards it…’

In the interview we discussed the range of intentions behind making art, as well as the lore, narrative, iconography and insanity that can be found at the core of Freddie’s practice. 

Freddie’s work lives and breathes these ideas, and the investigation and interrogation of them. A constant conversation trying to define a thing so indefinable, whilst at the same time undermining his search for meaning with a taste for humour and cynicism, a punk attitude to painting that takes the piss throughout. 

The subject matter used to communicate these dialogues creates a language of its own, from the banal to the symbolic, and the dark to the light (in every sense). This combination makes the work a rich playground of metaphors and humour.

‘If I like a band, or a pianist or whoever it is, it’s always come with this kind of obsession of them as a person as well. I like the lore around them and that kind of strange vicarious relationship you have with someone through that. It’s like a crush, you know. Yeah, it’s a real like, schoolboy crush. I wonder what they have for breakfast and how they have their tea and all that.’

‘The best advice I’ve really had from university was to have faith in the viewer, and to trust that someone can  have a response to it, and it’s not really got much to do with what you’re making. You’re just a mediator between one person and something else.’

Read the full interview in the first issue of our magazine, available in the store