Daphne Wright's 'Expectations' Exhibition Features Jesmonite Family Sculptures at Frith Street Gallery

Daphne Wright is presenting her exhibition 'Expectations' at Frith Street Gallery in London, running until April 18, 2026. The show includes new works such as 'Sons and Couch' (2025), which features life-sized casts of her sons in painted Jesmonite, depicting them in casual domestic poses. Wright, an artist from rural Ireland, studied at Sligo RTC and the National College of Art & Design in Dublin. Her practice explores materials, architecture, and tensions between fragility and strength, with early influences including Irish grand buildings and Georgian aesthetics. Notable past works include 'Still Life: Greenhouse' (1995), 'Indeed, Indeed' (1998), 'Stallion' (2009), and 'Fridge Still Life' (2021). Wright discusses her material-focused process, noting it takes about seven years to fully develop and understand a material before moving on. She often creates video works as notebooks or premonitions between phases. The artist incorporated her children into her art starting with 'Sons' (2011), busts of her sons at ages eight and ten, followed by 'Kitchen Table' (2014). She emphasizes obtaining her sons' permission for teenage casts, addressing dialogues around motherhood and artistic creation. Wright's exhibition 'Deep Rooted Things' was previously shown at the Ashmolean in Oxford, and 'A quiet mutiny' debuted at Crawford Art Gallery in Cork in 2019. Her work reflects on personal and artistic evolution, with themes of time, memory, and domestic intimacy.