Anna Freeman Bentley

Anna Freeman Bentley (b. 1982) is an artist based in London. Her painting practice explores the built environment, architecture and interiors, inviting emotive, psychological and semiotic readings of space. This publication, Complete Reality, documents Freeman Bentley’s latest series of paintings, which she created after visiting the film set for My Driver and I (2024), a coming-of-age drama set in the port city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. Over the course of the shoot, Freeman Bentley took over two thousand photographs, which she edited and worked from in her London studio. The paintings show lavish rooms, filled with fringed lamps, dusty chandeliers, vast mirrors and ornate furniture, juxtaposed with the incongruous signs of a film set: screens, leads, computers and plastic chairs. Exploring the relationship between ‘reality’ and ‘fabrication’, the series continues the artist’s interest in spaces that have an inherent tension or transience. Alongside the paintings that comprise Complete Reality, the publication also includes a series of oil studies on paper that explore additional rooms, angles and spaces from the film set. Installation images of the artist’s most recent solo exhibitions – Video Village at MASSIMODECARLO Pie`ce Unique, Paris (2024), make shift at Monica de Cardenas, Zuoz (2024), and Complete Reality at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles (2024–25) – showcase the works staged in different configurations and gallery environments. In her introduction, Jennifer Higgie considers the interiority of Freeman Bentley’s elusive scenes, and her interest in temporary and unreal spaces. The curator and writer Elisabetta Fabrizi interviews Freeman Bentley about the interplay of reality and illusion in her paintings. They reflect on themes of authenticity and narrative tension, and discuss Freeman Bentley’s earlier explorations of cinema, particularly Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979). Kathryn Lloyd writes about the conceptual and historical relationships between cinema, photography and painting. She analyses how Freeman Bentley forges an interdependence between these three distinct media, creating an unmistakably painterly language that somehow distils the essence of both film and photography. In an interview with Michele Robecchi, the artist discusses her recent solo exhibition in Switzerland, make shift. Freeman Bentley reflects on her personal connections to the work, the significance of the temporary and transitory nature of the film set and her use of triptychs, mirrors and fragmentation to disrupt conventional readings of space. In her contribution, the film producer Georgie Paget offers a speculative film script based on the exhibition Video Village at MASSIMODECARLO Pie`ce Unique, Paris. Edited by Matt Price and designed by Joanna Deans, the book is published by Anomie Publishing, London. Anna Freeman Bentley (b.1982) is an artist based in London. She completed her BA at Chelsea College of Arts, London, in 2004, and also undertook an Erasmus exchange at Kunsthochschule Weissensee in Berlin in 2003. She received her MA from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2010.

Anna Freeman Bentley’s paintings use architectural imagery to explore the emotive potential of space. Grounded in an interest in the baroque her source material includes junk shops, restaurants, private members clubs, flea markets and designed interiors. Central to her work is an investigation into surface, tension and the atmosphere evoked by these different interior surroundings. The spaces she depicts are empty, yet visual signifiers point to evidence of people and social happenings.This, Freeman Bentley’s third publication to date, is centred on the relationship between painting and cinema and is divided into sections dedicated to major paintings on canvas and panel, and a number of works on paper (all works 2021–22). Freeman Bentley’s work here is focused on sets from 'The Colour Room' (2021), a film that tells the story of the early career of celebrated British ceramicist Clarice Cliff (1899–1972). The foreword to the book is written by Rollo Campbell and Matt Incledon of Frestonian Gallery. An essay by writer and critic Thomas Marks draws out the importance to her work of historic and contemporary cinema and temporary architecture. Marks notes a change in palette in these new paintings, with Freeman Bentley embracing pastels and tracing parallels between the artist herself and Cliff. An interview with Georgie Paget, co-founder of Caspian Films, production company for 'The Colour Room', meanwhile, provides insight into the artist’s particular interest in the artifice of film props and of the film set as a layered space ‘steeped in meaning, purpose and potential.’ The two discuss the reciprocity of painting and cinema in detail, recounting Freeman Bentley’s experiences on the film’s sets and discussing her working processes, beginning with taking photographs on set, through to oil sketches and the later development of large-scale canvases.The publication is edited by Matt Incledon and Matt Price. It is designed by Joe Gilmore, printed and bound by Gomer, Wales, and co-published by Frestonian Gallery, London, and Anomie Publishing, London. The publication coincides with the second solo show by Anna Freeman Bentley at Frestonian Gallery, by whom the artist is represented. The exhibition, also titled ‘make believe’ is divided between two sites: the 2022 Armory Show, New York, and Frestonian Gallery, London. Anna Freeman Bentley studied Painting at Chelsea College of Art, Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee and the Royal College of Art. Awards and residencies include Palazzo Monti Residency, Brescia, Italy, 2019; The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant 2019 and 2017, and Artist in Restaurant residency at Michelin-starred restaurant Pied à Terre, London, 2012. Selected exhibitions (* denotes solo) include DENK Gallery, Los Angeles, 2019*, Ahmanson Gallery, Irvine, 2018*; Space K, Seoul, 2017; 68projects, Berlin, 2017; the East London Painting Prize 2014 and 2015; Workshop Gallery, Venice, 2012*; MAC Birmingham, 2011; Prague Biennale, 2011, and the Bloomberg New Contemporaries, 2009. Her work is part of the Hotel Crillon collection, Paris; Saatchi Collection, London; Hogan Lovells Collection, London; the Ahmanson Collection, California, and numerous private collections worldwide.

In this publication, British artist Anna Freeman Bentley presents a series of new paintings and works on paper documenting her journey into the exclusive realm of private members clubs. Having started out in her home city of London, her research took her to California, and in particular to some of the most desirable clubs of Los Angeles, where through friends, professional networks and a number of courteous emails, doors were temporarily opened to her. In places where photography is often strictly forbidden, Freeman Bentley was authorized to document some of the many luxurious lounges, well-stocked bars, and high-end restaurants that are second homes to the members who pay considerable fees to use them. Whether celebrities, self-made business people or those born into lavish lifestyles, members clubs are synonymous with wealth and success, where people can relax, socialize or do deals in a smart and protected environment free from fans, paparazzi or the general public. It is a world of affluence and glamour tailor-made for the jet-set, a meeting place where artists and art collectors fly in and drink cocktails, where high-net worth individuals and media moguls hang out with the great and the good from Hollywood or the music industry, and where social media stars can switch their phones to flight mode for a while and chat freely with friends. Freeman Bentley uses the photographs she takes of these interior and exterior spaces out of hours as the starting point for unpeopled drawings, collages and painted sketches, transforming her studies of members clubs into complex paintings that hover between reality and invention.Freeman Bentley is known for her paintings of architecture and interiors, not only exploring the physical attributes of the built environment, but also raising questions about how and why they are used, and how this is reflected in the ambiance and dynamics of a given space. At a time of heightened awareness of wealth inequality, through her painterly works Freeman Bentley gives us a glimpse inside the spaces of the social milieu of the financially successful, the movers and shakers, the leaders and trend setters, inviting us to respond as viewers in whatever ways we choose. For some, it may be a matter of curiosity or of desire and aspiration; for others the very idea of members clubs might be elitist or snobbish. Yet for others it might be an occasional treat, or simply an everyday occurrence, the norm. With her characteristic combination of matter-of-fact observation, critical reflection, and atmospheric perception, Freeman Bentley presents us with a body of work that is as enigmatic as it is intriguing, asking us not only about issues of individuality and communality, private and public life, exclusivity and inclusivity, but also about how we each fit into such dialectics, and what this says about our inner and outer lives.'Exclusive' has been co-published by Pinatubo Press, Inc., and Anomie Publishing, and released to coincide with an exhibition of the same name at the Ahmanson Gallery, Irvine, California, in spring 2018. This hardback publication showcases images of approximately twenty paintings and as many works on paper, alongside a foreword from collector and patron Roberta Ahmanson, an introduction by the exhibition curator John Silvis, and a specially commissioned essay from critic Jane Neal.Anna Freeman Bentley (b.1982) is an artist based in London. She studied painting at Chelsea College of Art and Design before graduating with an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2010. She has had solo exhibitions at venues including Wolfson College, Oxford (2017), Husk Project Space, London (2015), Workshop Gallery, Venice (2012), and Galerie Kollaborativ, Berlin (2007). Selected group exhibitions include ‘London Now’ at Space K, Seoul, South Korea (2017), ‘Der Kuhle Glanz’ at 68projects, Berlin (2017), the East London Painting Prize (2015 and 2014), the Prague Biennale 5 (2011), and Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2009). Freeman Bentley has been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including Breathing SPACE Residency, London (2015-16), the ERDF New Creative Markets Programme, London (2013-14); Artist in Restaurant at Pied à Terre, London (2012); The Florence Trust Artists Residency, London (2010-11) and The Chelsea Arts Club Trust Award, London (2009).