joseph scissorhands: Anna Von Freyburg: Filthy Cute

Sunday, 4 May 2025

Anna Von Freyburg: Filthy Cute

Anna Von Freyburg - Wild Child (After Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun), 2023

"With being unapologetic in my use of rich fabrics I am pushing against the accepted norms of fine art, being mindful and critical about fast fashion at the same time." - Anna Von Freyburg.

I happened across this exhibition by pure chance. I had returned to the Saatchi Gallery for another look at their Flowers exhibition of my last post (here), and just as I was about to leave I spied more of these wonderful textile works by Anna Von Freyburg in a gallery on the ground floor. Her piece, Floral Arrangement 1 (after Jan van Huysum Still Life), was one of the highlights for me in the Flowers - Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture show on the upper floors, and it was great to see a whole separate show solely devoted to Von Freyburg running concurrently at Saatchi. The works are all large complex textile compositions with a range of appliqué, quilting, tie-dye, sequin and embroidery techniques edged with sumptuous fringing which in some cases resembles rich impasto paint tumbling across the surface of the works, cascading down the gallery walls. These textile paintings make references to 17th century Dutch masters of the still life painting genre as well as Rococo period painters/paintings such as François Boucher (1703-1770) and Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806). Von Freyburg's textiles certainly have a swagger and stylisation about them worthy of the Rococo era. As well as alluding to the past the artist also makes contemporary pop culture references within the titles of the works relating to songs by Iggy Pop and bands such as The Killers. From a distance a couple of the pieces resemble Guiseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) portraits, an artist famous for his surreal paintings of portrait heads made up from objects such as books, fruit or flowers etc. Indeed the surfaces of Von Freyburg's pieces are worthy of closer scrutiny as viewers can see in works such as Filthy Cute, that the portrait faces are made up of appliquéd cavorting figures in period costumes cut from contemporary jacquard fabrics. These are wonderfully sumptuous textile paintings which in their own way are just as rich as those executed in oils or acrylics.