Reading Arnolfini CEO, Kate Brindley’s introduction to
Daphne Wright’s solo exhibition, ‘Emotional Archaeology’ left me slightly
surprised at the number of influences Wright’s work uses, “...the suburban and the domestic realm, also drawing upon references
from art history, literature and film, to nonsense poetry and country and
western music...” Brindley continues her intro in stating that through
these references Wright, “offers us ways
to think about difficult, often side-lined issues relating to class, aspiration,
faith, parenthood, aging and care.” That’s a lot to process and leaves the sceptic in me wondering how many of
these ideas Wright actually intended to be present in her work and how much of
the aforementioned was Kate Brindley possibly over-outlining the ways of
interpreting it? [Though it is important to note that this exhibition is in two halves, at Arnolfini and a National Trust property, Tyntesfield in North Somerset; this post focusing solely on the Arnolfini work]. Either way it points to the occupation for much of contemporary
art as being ‘all encompassing’ or dealing with a wide range of ideas such as 'contemporary culture', whatever that is exactly? Whether it does this to make itself more accessible to audiences or give it an authority that ‘the
establishment’ feels art needs in order to be credible or taken seriously I am unsure. What I will say however is that in
writing about art I often worry about over analysing it as
sometimes you miss the overall message; there’s a skill in being able to pick
out themes in an artwork and another in being able to succinctly capture what
it is about in only a few words. I’m still practising at both! In my
stubbornness, I wanted to challenge that introduction a little and make my own
conclusions about Daphne Wright’s work; so upon walking into the first room of
the exhibition at Arnolfini and being confronted with an upturned, life-size
flayed sculpture of a horse, a swan and monkey each in similar states of
distress, one way or another, I was about to find out!
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| Stallion (2009) Marble dust and Resin. |
From the beginning, the works in this exhibition clearly
present themselves as being made by a highly skilled and competent sculptor
interested in the nature of materials; this is an exhibition by an artist that,
without wanting to dumb it down too much, ‘likes making’ (in other works upstairs it almost comes across as a kind-of 'thinking through the process of making'). The sculpture
‘Stallion’ in the first room; a life-size horse
exquisitely cast from resin and covered in marble dust to give the effect of
being entirely sculpted from marble whilst also mimicking a museum copied process.
The whiteness of the marble against the theatrical red painted walls of the
gallery creates for dramatic effect in what is the first of a series of
contrasts throughout the exhibition used to create tension, anxiety or unease.
The first piece that strikes you is the horse; it is an unusual perspective to
see a horse from, yes it is distressing but in that infamous Andy Warhol, ‘car
crash’ voyeuristic kind-of way it is also very interesting; even more so in
context to its neighbours the hanging lamb, sickly monkey and flailing swan.
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| Lamb (2006) Marble dust, resin. |
It is emotive, possibly all
the more so for the animals various states being suspended in time, almost as
if to prolong or scrutinise their situation. They play upon our understanding
of myths; the powerful, heroic horse now fallen; the swan referring to the
fallen young male in the Greek myth, Leda and the Swan’. Whether I would have
picked-up on these specific references or not I did make the association
between the portrayals of the animals as though museum sculpture in contrast to
those ideals being presented in a much darker reality. The material and
craftsmanship ignites a curiosity into the work before being repulsed or
affected by the 'tragedy' of their situation.
That first room is where the animal theme begins and
ends. Upstairs is a stylistically similar treatment of materials and shares
with it a sense of conflict but is completely unexpected in content. A
pot-plant made from unfired clay limply droops on the stairs to the upper
gallery its sorry state reminiscent of a guilty truth of many whom will relate
to the familiarity a neglected houseplant. The plant’s domesticity being more
familiar than that of the horse, and in my opinion, more poignant in capturing
the fragility between life and death. It is far more subtle. ‘Could this be
what Wright’s work is about?’ I ask myself; ‘A reaction or set of emotive
responses to these objects and their unusual materials?’ If so then the
viewer’s conscious is pricked, pardon the pun, further in works such as ‘Where
Do Broken Hearts Go?’ cacti made from tinfoil, into a sparse aluminium sci-fi
desert complete with Country and Western songs. It is kind of tragic in its falseness and sense of melodrama. In a separate room Wright
casts her two sons in jesmonite, they sit coldly and serenely on a family
kitchen table in a part of the exhibition dedicated to children and child
rearing. Here is also an unfired piece titled, ‘Clay Heads’ comprised of
several free-standing naive faces with slits for eyes, their features
unfinished or childlike again in attempt to use the material as a metaphor of both the malleable as well as fragility or vulnerability of childhood identity. If taken as a room unto itself
it is quite interesting and you could draw a lot upon conversations of time,
childhood and growing-up but for me personally, it is an idea touched upon in
art and clay before (think Antony Gormley).
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| Still Life Plant (2014) Unfired clay.* |
One of the most successful pieces in the exhibition for
me, is ‘Domestic Shrubbery’ and takes the form of decorative Victorian plaster
flowers, fauna and twisting branches that fill a room, floor to ceiling on
every wall. Imagine a 3D version of William Morris wallpaper! What was once
dismissively decorative now takes on a more constricting and sinister reality
becoming an ensnaring cage of artificial nature than twee, idyllic country
pattern. In some ways it is still quite beautiful from a craftsmanship
point-of-view but I think the way that Wright subverts the domesticity and
symbolism of nature used in that Victorian decoration and draws upon the
wildness and threatening nature of those patterns into something that is
altogether more confrontational. This was something designed to cause unease
and if further proof was needed then hidden amongst the crisscrossing fronds is
tiny shrivelled hearts accompanied by an eerie soundtrack of a woman’s voice
making cuckoo calls. The heart’s make it a bit cliché and aren’t really needed
but the presence of the cuckoo call is a reminder of the ‘cuckoo in the nest’ and
the bird’s nature of laying its eggs in the nests of other birds. The viewer
here is the outsider, the intruder in the nest both seduced by the inherent
skill and beauty of the fragile casted decor and trapped by it at the same time. It is the sort of work and space that changes
your behaviour whilst you’re in it; a mixture of carefulness and curiosity. For
these reasons it is one of the few pieces that best fits the following
description, I read online about her work; “Wright’s
art is the result of a relentless curiosity into the way in which a range of
materials can create an involvement with often unspoken human preoccupations.”
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| Domestic Shrubbery (2009) Plaster, sand and spoken word. |
After seeing the exhibition it raises an important issue
for me with Wright’s work, in that it is hard to pin down to a single set of
ideas or theme and instead of having one clear message it has several. People
will go away remembering pieces from ‘Emotional Archaeology’, the horse, the
lamb, the wallpaper, the monkey, but the link between the, ‘what was
this all about?’ was more woolly when viewing the exhibition as a whole.
Neither is there a huge amount of information about the artist to provide clues
so you are left only with the work on display. Content-wise it is quite
fragmented to piece together though an attempt to link the work comes
through in the concept of archaeology derived in the exhibition title. If
archaeology is taken to mean ‘the study of human activity through the recovery
and analysis of material culture’ then the exhibition does take material
culture of the home and references to childhood or Westerns in pop-culture and
analyses how these themes can be reconstructed in tinfoil, clay or
film and during that process new ideas are discovered that subvert our
original understanding of that culture. Though more considerable effort and
imagination is required to link pieces such a ‘Swan’ and ‘Primate’ to an ideas
of the museum, myths and archaeological practices. I do not want to get too
hung up on exhibition titles but in this case I was looking to the title for more
guidance as to what Daphne Wright’s work was all about, it almost felt like it was trying to say too much and was possibly in danger of
saying nothing at all. The exhibition's curator, Josephine Lanyon likens
Wright's process of making work to that of emotional archaeology, "uncovers truths in the process of reproducing
our contemporary culture." Whether those truths were about life,
death, guilt, relationships, I am unsure? And I still do not know why you would
necessarily go looking for anything truth seeking or meaningful in wallpaper
without a reason I seem to be missing. If all of the above then the exhibition
felt like a sweeping statement rather than a close look in depth at any one of
those ‘truths’. It felt a little bit clichéd. Essentially there are many great
parts in this exhibition but, perhaps like archaeology there are many gaps as
there are answers, I’m just not sure about the whole.
Daphne Wright
‘Emotional Archaeology’ is on at The Arnolfini until December 31st. http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/daphne-wright-emotional-archaeology
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