Night Scanning
Freddie uses a hi-resolution scanner to ‘photograph’ plants and flowers at night - creating huge highly detailed images, which are defined by the limited technology of the scanner and the natural ‘arrangement’ of the plant.
Night Scanning - Rollers
Night Scanning - Hellebores
Pollen Pigment
My research into industrial agriculture’s environmental impact led me to pollen - this amazing life giving material that will be seen by future lifeforms as a marker for human mistakes and destruction.
I started collecting different forms of pollen and discovered its delicate and unpredictable colours. I decided to use it as pigment and started painting.
I create text works, painstakingly produced with pen and pollen ink, which catalogue my own journey in understanding this threat of environmental destruction. They cover a broad range of topics including reflections on family life, personal mottos, quotes and statistics charting the impact of agricultural progress.
Pollen text works - #ArtistSupportPledge
Popeye Collective
Founded by Freddie in January 2018, when he started hosting plant-based food events for artists and experts. The collective includes Cultural Comms consultant Kiran Gill, Architect Eddie Blake.
Popeye Collective creates conversations over food. We want to be a catalyst for new culture inspired by Plant-based food systems.
Chaat Chat
Popeye Collective have created a recipe that weaves multiple narratives together to transform a can of mushy peas into a delicious culturally rich dish you can make yourself at home.
For this podcast their recipe for Mushy Pea Chaat will guide the conversation; charting personal histories, unpicking colonial pasts and trying to understand the role our diets and the arts can have on the climate crisis.
On that fearful day
Filmed on the morning of 31st March 2021, a year after the beginning of the first Lockdown, when 126,968 people had died of COVID in the UK.
Set to Jocelyn Pook's magical and haunting 'Libera me' and filmed in Abney Park Cemetery, one of Londons 7 great cemeteries and a place I spent hundreds of hours watching the seasons pass and taking refuge with my family over the past year.
I was sad, confused, anxious and angry when I shot this - the beginning of 2021 was dark and horrible. But it was quite restorative to edit and re find all the beauty of spring amongst the graves, not to mention the rainbows.
Watch Freddie talk about 'Signs of Life 2.020'
Signs of Life 2.020
A new 2020 edition of Freddie's reactive digital fire exit sign.
Edition of 20 + 2AP - contact Gallery FUMI
The original Signs of Life, produced in 2009 for Gallery FUMI, is in the permanent collection at MoMA in New York.
Morris-anuary
Each spring whilst growing my ginger beard for three months -1st January to 24th March (William Morris’s Birthday) - I totally immerse myself in William Morris’s life and work. Attempting to ‘become’ Morris, making new works which release or perform each year on 24th March to celebrate Morris’s Birthday.
I have always admired and associated with William Morris (or Topsy to his friends). Like him I'm an artist, designer and maker, a social entrepreneur and a privileged (and sometimes compromised) socialist. I went to Forest School in Walthamstow, attending Chapel under Morris’s stained Glass - the same school that Morris’s Brothers attended, whilst William himself was privately tutored by the headmaster of Forest School. I have two daughters like Topsy - and my youngest daughter Nancy has Morris & Co curtains in her bedroom - so many connections!