There is a small subversion at the heart of Martha Freud's work, a porcelain plate that looks like a wedding gift until you read what it says. Her ceramics carry inscribed phrases, lyrics, clichés turned inside out, that move between cheeky wordplay and something closer to earnest protest, often landing both at once.
The work is funny in the way that good honesty is funny, which is to say it lands because it is true.
Each piece is slip cast or hand built in porcelain, glazed and fired through traditional ceramic processes, with text embedded directly into the surface rather than applied after. The fragility of the material is the point: delicate forms holding language that is anything but.
Freud studied Furniture and Product Design at Kingston University before discovering porcelain, which she has described as love at first sight. She is the great-niece of Lucian Freud and great-great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, though her practice has deliberately carved its own ground. Her work is held in private collections across London and installed throughout Firmdale Hotels.
