14 September–27 October, 2019
4 Herald Street

LOVING THAT WHICH IS ABSENT

They and they love. The object loves and knows where to kneel, the dust, the red glass. Red is substance, red earth arched into form, red sulphur, red blood, red cover of a book perched on the edge of a table, red arrow pointing in four directions: one to home, the red; one to the dead who are absent in white clay; to the living, above water; and to that which is most absent, more absent than the dead.


A VIOLENT SITUATION

A hand can only grasp, amidst The movement of a few muscles and it grasps nothing. A red eye flickers into the dark absence in search of the substance. Brush away, raise a finger to the wind brush aside with the back of the hand. The first sweep will be a cleansing, the second a revelation.


THE SUBSTANCE WILL GRASP

Metal replaces the white eyes. And replaces the body or flesh we are accustomed to see walking. Bore me a hole to see (the last hole through which to see, much if nothing it is grey, or silver). Cut through with a sharp tool, tool on metal makes the good noise we know then it is present. When a hammer strikes a nail it is present. At the cutting edge of the blade it is, that which the hand will fail to grasp. Emerges from silence, falls into silence again.


A HOLLOW NOISE AND SUCH IS

Of knowing. Of the serpent’s forked tongue a split road pointing one way towards the white clay mouldable, and one towards the living. At the end of both roads hear the hammer, bolt and nail driven down by the weight of much earth, of gravity. A hollow noise expresses that which is absent again the indelible absence endured under breeze, under breath.


—Vanessa Onwuemezi

Kira Freije (b. 1985, London) completed a BA in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at the University of Oxford in 2011 and received her Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Academy Schools, London in 2016. Solo exhibitions include: Companion to a Fall at Turf Projects, London (2018); The violence of an Imagined Dusk at 12 Mackintosh Lane, London (2018), The Dark Away at Recent Activity, Birmingham (2017); Our Tongues Are The Replaceable Filaments at Occidental Temporary, Paris (2016) and A Rapid Succession of Noises That You Confuse For Danger at the Royal Academy, London (2016). Recent group exhibitions featuring Freije’s work include: The Garden at RA Schools, Royal Academy, London (2019), The Charade at Lockup International, London (2019); Sheltering Sky at GAO Gallery, London (2019); Go at Soft Opening, Piccadilly Underground Station, London (2018); Flipside at Fold Gallery, London (2018); Ecstasy in Norwich at Lower Green, Norwich (2018); Dead Heat at Kunstraum Ortloff, Leipzig, Germany (2017); The Sleeping Procession, Cass Sculpture Foundation, Chichester (2017); No Place to Spit, SET project space, London (2017); Walled Gardens in an Insane Eden, Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome, Italy (2017) and A Rose Is Without a ‘Why.’ It Blooms Because It Blooms at Carl Freedman Gallery, London (2016).

Press

Mousse Magazine

PDF

Exhibition pamphlet