“My starting points were artless, worthless artefacts and materials – rubbish, discards, fragments, souvenirs, and reproductions – which seemed to carry an aura of memory and to hint they might mean something…” – Susan Hiller From the Freud Museum by artist Susan Hiller is an expanded version of an earlier installation produced by the artist. This earlier work was commissioned by publisher Book Works and was a response to The Freud Museum in North London, Sigmund Freud’s last home before his death. The installation originally consisted of 23 brown cardboard boxes, much like the collecting boxes used by archaeologists, laid out inside a vitrine, and installed in what was Freud’s bedroom. These boxes contained objects, photographs and texts from a variety of different sources – some had been in Hiller’s possession for a number of years whilst others were chanced upon or specifically sought out for the work. Hiller was interested in Freud’s museological collection of classical art, artefacts and books, both in the way they were categorised, but also in the way in which he used them for inspiration in his psychoanalysis. The centrepiece of Freud’s home is his study which is filled with his collection of antiquities – over 2000 items from Egypt, Greece, Rome and the Orient. On the desk where he would complete much of his later writing, stands a variety of idols such as Vishnu, Ptah and the Egyptian God Osiris. These figures gave stimulus for Freud to associate his ideas and establish metaphors for pyschoanalysis through archeology and myth, a different approach to how he would allow his patients to freely associate on the psychoanalysts couch. Hiller has also allowed herself to freely associate the objects she has selected. For example, in the box titled ‘Cowgirl’ a photocopied photograph of American outlaw Jennie Metcalf is paired with two white china creamers in the shape of cows. In her description of this pairing, Hiller has written “I never heard a woman called a cow until I came to England”. Here, history, myth, notoriety, objecthood, kitsch, craft, English culture and entymology come into association with each other, creating new meanings and interpretations. After the vitrine and contents were de-installed from The Freud Museum in 1994 Hiller developed the installation for the subsequent five years. The completed installation presented here contains approximately 50 boxes. From the Freud Museum was purchased for the Tate Collection in 1998 and was also re-presented at The Freud Museum in 1999–2000. From the Freud Museum, 1991–6 Susan Hiller Courtesy Tate www.susanhiller.org
After the Freud Museum Susan Hiller