river by night will bring together elements that recur in Freije’s work – the human presence, narrative fragments, evocation of time and place, and references to interior states and to the built and natural worlds – which will take on a distinct charge in relation to Cample’s domestic scale and rural setting. 

The exhibition title – river by night – offers a tentative narrative hook, alluding to the presence of the river Cample, just some 15 metres from the gallery building, and imparting a nocturnal register, at once comforting and unnerving. A tall streetlamp (from which the exhibition takes its title) looms like a delicate beacon, a marker of a threshold. Other works – Recognition of the world behind nightfall and Autumn dusk – equally conjure a sense of the fading day, of one thing becoming another, of the liminal state.

river by night is Freije’s first solo exhibition in Scotland and is accompanied by newly commissioned writing by Francesca Wade. It will travel to Kestle Barton in Helston, Cornwall in summer 2023.

Opening times: Thursday-Sunday, 11am-4pm, or by appointment outside of those times
Entry is free – all are welcome
The exhibition is wheelchair accessible

Supported by Creative Scotland, The Elephant Trust and The Henry Moore Foundation.

About the artist:

Kira Freije (b 1985, London) lives and works in London. She employs metal, fabric, and found materials to produce materially rich sculptures that explore surreal or exaggerated narrative situations driven by empathy. She studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford (2008-2011) and the Royal Academy Schools, graduating in 2016. After graduating from the Ruskin, Freije worked with local blacksmiths in Sussex, acquiring the metalwork skills such as cold forming and sand casting that have informed her subsequent work.