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Carl Freedman (born 1965) is a British curator, who has worked with Damien Hirst and helped pioneer the Britart phenomenon. He was a partner of Tracey Emin for three years.
Life and work
Freedman and Damien Hirst had been friends in Leeds before Hirst moved to London. Following Damien Hirst's seminal 1988 show Freeze, Freedman, with Billee Sellman, curated two influential "warehouse" shows in 1990, Modern Medicine and Gambler, in a Bermondsey former factory they designated Building One. To stage Modern Medicine they succeeded in raising £1,000 sponsorships from artworld figures including Charles Saatchi. Freedman has spoken openly about the self-fulfilling prophecy these sponsors helped to create.
Saatchi arrived at Gambler in a green Rolls Royce and, according to Freedman, stood open-mouthed with astonishment in front of (and then bought) Hirst's first major "animal" installation, A Thousand Years, consisting of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head."Market News:Counter", The Daily Telegraph, 17 March, 2003 Retrieved April 2, 2006 (The installation was later a notable feature of the Sensation exhibition.) At this early stage, Freedman was helping to make Hirst's vitrines, and has commented that not many people attended these early shows, including Freeze.
In 1994 he toured the US with Emin, driving in a Cadillac from San Francisco to New York, making stops en route where she gave readings from her autobiographical book Exploration of the Soul to finance the trip. En route they "belly surfed" in San Diego and watched bears in Big Sur.
The couple also spent time by the sea in Whitstable together, using the beachut, which she uprooted and turned into art in 1999 with the title The Last Thing I Said to You is Don't Leave Me Here, and which was destroyed (along with her "tent") in the 2004 Momart warehouse fire.
In 1995 he curated the show Minky Manky at the South London Gallery. Emin says, "At that time Sarah (Lucas) was quite famous, but I wasn’t at all. Carl said to me that I should make some big work as he thought the small-scale stuff I was doing at the time wouldn’t stand up well. I was furious. Making that work was my way at getting back at him.""Tracey Emin with Barry Barker", University of Brighton, December 3, 2003 Retrieved April 2, 2006 The result was Emin's famous "tent" Everyone I have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, which was first exhibited in the show. Freedman's interview with her appears in the catalogue. Other featured artists were Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, Damien Hirst, Mat Collishaw, Gilbert & George, Critical Décor and Stephen Pippin. Freedman said one of the show's themes was:
- the artist as a subject, and (to) explore the relationship between the art on the wall and its creator, to make the whole thing more humanistic. And in there somewhere there is the beginnings of a thesis on the relationship and similarities between madness and modernism, for example, defiance of authority, nihilism, examples of extreme relativism, strange transformations of the self, irrationality, and things like that."Do You Want to Be in My Gang", Liz Ellis, February 2, 1997 Retrieved April 2, 2006
As interest in the YBA's reached a peak in 1996-7, Freedman was a regular writer for The Guardian. In 2000 he started the business Counter Editions with Matthew Slotover, publisher of Frieze magazine, (Slotover has since left) to sell prints online by artists such as Hirst, Emin and Lucas. In 2003 he opened the Counter gallery Charlotte Road, Shoreditch, East London to sell original works. The launch was attended by Emin, Hume, Gavin Turk, Rachel Whiteread, Gillian Wearing and the Chapman brothers. The opening show had works by Simon Martin, an art lecturer and YBA contemporary.
Emin now describes Freedman as "one of my best friends". He is now her tenant, living in a weaver's cottage at the back of her 450-year-old Huguenot house in Spitalfields, East London.
See also
References
External links
1965 births | Living people | British curators | British art dealers
"Carl Freedman"