Zoe Freney

Zoe Freney is a South Australian artist, arts writer and arts educator. She and her husband, Martin Freney, have also built Australia’s first council-approved Earthship.

Biography
Freney has a Diploma of Visual Art from Adelaide Central School of Art (2005), a Bachelor of Visual Art from Adelaide Centre for the Arts (2006), and a Master in Art History from the University of Adelaide (2010). Freney lectures in art history at Adelaide Central School of Art.

As an arts writer, she has written several catalogue essays and reviews (see Bibliography) and in 2017, she was one of four artists (including Daniel Connell) who travelled to India as part of a South Australian Government Arts Engagement Program.

She is married to Martin Freney and they have two sons. Together, they built a strawbale house and followed this by building Australia’s first council-approved Earthship, Earthship Ironbank, which they rent out as a B&B.

Artistic style and subject
Freney is a painter whose paintings examine motherhood and often feature herself as model, as seen in the group exhibition, Good Mother, her solo exhibition, Motherology, and the group exhibition, Labors: An Exhibition Exploring the Complexities of Motherhood at Pearl Conard Gallery, Ohio State University (2018).

Awards and prizes
She has been a finalist in the Heysen Landscape Art Prize (2018), the Prospect Portrait Prize (2017), the Fleurieu Biennale (2018) and the Emma Hack Art Prize (2017). Freney was also a joint winner of the inaugural Queen of Clubs Art Prize from Peter Lehmann Wines in 2000.