Freya Lawton

What did Brancusi Know?

That is the question that has driven my life for more than 20 years.
On a rainy day in London I took shelter in a gallery filled with his work.
It moved me to tears, tears of something I couldn’t name, they continued for weeks.
I resigned from my job and set out to discover what he had done to me.

I got sick and began making sculpture in my pyjamas. Between bouts of intense pain that by necessity took me outside myself and my body. I saw my soul and sculpted it. Forms emerged that remain with me.

A friend saw my sculpture and mentioned David Nash. By synchronicity I became his assistant in North Wales. A print on his wall by John Cage lead me to work with the I Ching, synchronicity became a path. The prints I made predicted the fall of the twin towers.

I got more sick and could no longer use my hands. I made films instead. The films were shown and sometimes people cried.

I filmed inside a disused chapel. Layers and layers of repurpose smothered its original sacred intent. But somewhere in the holes in the floor, the exercise posters and penciled calculations on the wall and the abandoned bible of a thousand tissue thin pages something showed itself. I had no love for religion but somethin...

Swansea University BA Psychology
Liverpool John Moores University MA New Media
Assistant to Sculptor David Nash RA