Jane Frere
Scottish artist and theatre designer Jane Frere has worked in a variety of media over many years. She began painting professionally whilst living in Greece, prior to formal training at the Central St Martin's College of Art and Design and at the Slade School of Fine Art (UCL). She works as an artist and theatre designer, in addition to having built an international reputation as a radical theatre producer bringing cutting edge productions to wider attention.
After a recent year dedicated to research, Jane, who works from her studio overlooking Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands, is currently preparing a joint exhibition in Cairo with the Palestinian artist Laila Shawa in the early autumn of 2010. The exhibition will include a series of large paintings, using oils, acrylics and mixed media, reflecting her response to her experience of living behind the wall in the West Bank, complementing Laila Shawa's work as an artist unable to return to her home in Gaza. A preview of some of the works will be posted in the artist's website gallery section shortly.
She created the concept and raised funds internationally for a major artistic collaboration - the Nakbah Project - which began with a journey to a concentration camp in Poland and led to Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, Jordan and Lebanon. The monumental artwork which resulted - a multi-media installation now amounting to 7,000 suspended wax figures - was accompanied by a soundscape, written testimonies and video recordings of interviews with Palestinian families displaced in the "Nakbah" in 1948. The project was undertaken in collaboration with the Al Hoash Gallery in East Jerusalem. Further details, more images, and video reports by the BBC, Al Jazeera and others, can be found on the project's webpages - Alnakbah.net.
An early artist's impression and a fragment of the sculptural installation (photographed by Malcolm Crowthers ©) in East Jerusalem.
The installation has been exhibited in East Jerusalem, Edinburgh, Beirut and Amman. The Nakbah Project is destined to continue with further collaborations with displaced Palestinians, and with plans to tour eventually with a combined sculptural installation of 7,000 plus figures.
As part of the evolutionary process in researching and developing the Nakbah Project, Jane created an video-based experimental artwork shown as a three-screen installation at a festival in Poland, and as a result was commissioned by a London gallery to develop a larger video installation. She also created a set of glazed boxes of her own figures, which are available to commission.
Boxes by Jane Frere ©
Montage of video stills by Jane Frere ©
Jane's most recent theatre work prompted controversy over her use of shoes in the set design for Go to Gaza, Drink the Sea, which premiered in London in February. An immediate response to Israel's onslaught which caused the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians including women and children in Gaza, the set was praised for its "astonishing design" by eminent Guardian critic Michael Billington. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/feb/21/go-gaza-drink-sea-technis
London set installed at the Theatre Technis, St Pancras February 2009. Photograph courtesy Malcolm Crowthers ©
A smaller set design was devised for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at the Assembly Hall, Edinburgh. See http://www.edinburghguide.com/festival/2009/edinburghfringe/gotogazadrinktheseareview
The set at Assembly Hall, Edinburgh. Photographs courtesy Neville Rigby ©
Recent exhibitions and residencies:
2006
- Maski Festival, Poznan Poland. Triple screen video installation.
2007
- Al Hoash Gallery, East Jerusalem
- Darat al Funun Gallery, Amman.
2008
- May: Al Hoash Gallery.
- August: Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh Art Festival - Return of the Soul installation - see The Scotsman review August 2008
- September: Balad Al Shams Theatre, Beirut, Lebanon - Return of the Soul installation
- September: Qattan Foundation Mosaic Rooms Gallery London - shared exhibition - http://www.occupiedspace.org.uk/
- October: Darat al Funun, Amman, Jordan - Return of the Soul installation - exhibition with Mona Hatoum (until February 2009)
To contact Jane Frere, email: contact@janefrere.info or telephone +44 (0) 131 208 1948
© Jane Frere