Between Vessel and Void is emerging Wiradjuri artist Freyja Fristad’s first solo exhibition at Meanjin’s PARKER Contemporary.
Fristad is primarily concerned with conveying a ‘void’ in knowledge of her maternal Australian heritage through contemporary printmaking. However, from the perspective of her paternal Norwegian one, ‘ginnungagap’ or the ‘gaping abyss’ is a place of creation in Norse and Germanic mythology. The most nuanced of the series presented in this exhibition, titled Penumbrae and employing Roman numerals, lingers upon spaces between constructed elements in the landscape.
Gaps in the pavement, beneath concrete seating – the potential for seedings to sprout is alluded to by the eponymous shadows cast by trees. A reverence of nature seems consistent with both of Fristad’s cultures, and one way of reading these compositions is her attempting to strip back colonialist infrastructure.
Like her choice of architectural features, some of the domestic objects in her still lifes have a decidedly Scandinavian minimalism to their forms. This is particularly true of Vessel 1 – 6 (2024). The linocuts which make up a majority of the larger prints in this exhibition, were drawn from bitmaps of photographs. In addition to carving the vessel components into voids to symbolise ‘displaced knowledge’ and ‘severed ancestral ties’ Fristad has chosen to capture the grain of digitisation.
In the 1930s, women like Ethel Spowers used linocuts to document Australian modernity. The absence of grain – of the wood variety – signalled technological and cultural progress. These vessel prints could also be viewed as a nod to the repurposing of a material manufactured for residential flooring. Use of the medium as an artform was initiated by the German artist Erich Heckel in the early 20th century.
Perhaps what is most interesting about these larger prints is Fristad’s method of printing using a spoon. The tactility and sensitivity lost through the photographic process is returned through the uneven and expressive transference of ink. Some viewers might relate to an interrogation of photographs reminiscent of Gerhart Ritcher’s paintings. Others might be reminded of Bridget O’Reilly’s early monochromatic Op Art when they experience the atmospheric Void (2024).
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Between Vessel and Void is a solid effort by this 2024 graduate of a Master of Fine Art from the National Art School. She challenges viewer expectations of her as a First Nations artist and the conventions of the media she engages. This could be equated with exponential potential for growth.
Freyja Fristad: Between Vessel and Void will be exhibited at PARKER Contemporary, South Bank, Brisbane until 31 May 2025.
