22 January — 22 March 2026
Opening Event: Thursday, January 22 • 5:30 - 7:30PM
Freya Burnett: Essence
Presented in association with Plomacy
Freya Burnett, Essence, 2025
In essence, the essence becomes of the essence.
Extending a warm invitation into a space of potency, Essence veers away from conventional depictions of calm, instead seeking refuge within a visually opulent realm. It articulates a relationship between care, fantasy, and charm, positioning the feminine experience as a space that is both precious and attentively nurtured.
Essence serves as a meditation on the value and fragility of interior states, ultimately calling for a conscious and passionate embrace of enchantment. Essence is a continuation of Freya Burnett’s exploration of feminine interiority, enchantment and the brain as a site of tenderness. The work places viewers within an immersive projection-mapped environment that operates as a loosely defined interior. The projected surfaces build a reflective atmosphere, nesting textures together; Jewel tones, carbonated liquids, speckled light and mirror-like imagery that build on Burnett’s existing visual language. Fergus Waveforms (Tāmaki Makaurau) constructed the soundscape for Essence using Ableton Live Software. Contrasting sonic characters, Waveforms used a different type of digital synthesis including granular, wavetable and subtractive synths to generate each individual layer of sound.
About the Artist
Freya Burnett (b.1998) is an MFA graduate of the Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design (2024) and is based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Themes of magic, camp and feminine ecstasy form the heartbeat of Freya Burnett's sculpture and immersive moving image installation practice. Working with these themes she aims to harness the materiality and function of light and liquid as tools to materialise spaces that aspire to evoke sensations of complex tranquillity, enchantment and decadence.
Recent exhibitions include Creature Comforts at Plomacy, Auckland in 2025. The Potion at DEMO, Auckland Trash Palace at 74 Karangahape Road, Auckland both 2024 and Portal to the Shiny Labyrinth at DEMO, Auckland 2023.
Freya Burnett’s new moving image work is an exploration of feminine interiority, sensory excess and the brain as a site of tenderness.
Plomacy is a dynamic, experimental art gallery located in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Leaning into curiosity and risk, Plomacy champions contemporary art, media, and independent publications through a focused, perspective-driven exhibition programme and store. Initially conceived as a space for new media and video, the gallery has since expanded to encompass a broader range of contemporary practices, including installation, sculpture, painting, and publishing.