Within Between Vessel and Void, Freyja Fristad presents an evocative body of work that navigates the intergenerational loss of First Nations cultural knowledge within her family. As a proud First Nations (Wiradjuri) artist who lives and works across Dharawal and Gadigal land in Sydney, Fristad’s art practice bridges photography and printmaking through her meticulously carved, horizontally-lined bitmap relief prints of mass-produced domestic objects—sourced from commercial and personal imagery—into metaphysical vessels. These everyday forms, stripped of function, become symbolic containers of absence, memory, and grief. They stand in for lost artefacts, displaced knowledge, and severed ancestral ties, revealing how the personal is inextricably bound to broader histories of cultural erasure.
Drawing on the concept of rhopography—depicting objects considered minor or insignificant—this technical strategy not only transfers photographic imagery to linoleum but also, in the making process, introduces a moiré instability within these objects. This optical interference pattern shifts between photorealism and digital distortion. This flickering instability becomes an apt metaphor for fractured perception and disrupted cultural transmission. Crucially, the act of carving is more than a method of image-making; it is a conceptual gesture of excavation. By cutting away material, Fristad renders the void visible—giving form to what has been lost. The voids within her prints speak to the silences and absences within family history.
Embedded in her lived experience on Dharawal land and shaped by navigating absence and reconnection within contemporary art, Fristad’s work deeply explores cultural memory, visibility, and the silent power of objects. Fristad’s works destabilise the viewer’s perception to reconsider what is preserved, what is lost, and how we hold meaning in the spaces between.
Freyja Fristad is a Wiradjuri print-based artist who lives and creates work across Dharawal and Gadigal land (Sydney, Australia) with a Master of Fine Art majoring in Printmaking from the National Art School. Fristad was the recipient of the National Art School Aboriginal Art Centre Internship and the Print Council of Australia’s Colin Holden Print Commission in 2024, the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize (Indigenous Emerging) in 2023, and the Megalo Studio and Gallery Residency Award (Printmaking) and the Mark Henry Cain Memorial Travel Scholarship in 2022. In 2023, she was a finalist in the Lloyd Rees Emerging Artist Award and the Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award. Her work has been exhibited in numerous shows, including ED 6 at Our Neon Foe, The PostGrad Show at the National Art School, DISRUPTION: Discourse and Exchange at 16Albermarle project space, and Wish You Were Here: Megalo Artists in Residence 2013–2023 at Megalo Print Studio. The National Art School, City of Sydney, Ravenswood School for Girls, Megalo Print Studio and private collections have acquired Fristad’s artwork.
Exhibiiton Opening: Saturday May 17, 3.00pm – 5.00pm RSVP Here
Image: Freyja Fristad, VESSEL #6, Linocut relief on Accademia, 98x98cm. Edition of 6 + AP. Image courtesy the artist.
