Daphne Wright is known for her unsettling sculptural installations that tap into the fragility of the human condition: in conversation with Bnan McAvera she recalls the source of her inspiration
Brian McAvera: Daphne, you were born into a Protestant background fo County Longford in 1963, and you were brought up on a farm. What are your childhood memories?
Daphne Wright: I do object to ‘Protestant’ because I found out very early on that it is an easy category, and not an accurate one. Within that community there’s lots of complicated schisms. In the beginning, I spent time looking at that aspect in my work; until I realized that it was the label 1 was looking at, not what I was myself. Within that label there are minorities within the minority. That’s quite a significant thing. You can’t be on a farm and not work. That particular background of a work ethic was important. I had a positive childhood; a total immersion in a rural place. I think we lived in quite a separate way. My mum’s family were Huguenots and then Methodists, and my father’s were Church of Ireland and Quakers, possibly Cromwellians. There was aJways a certain otherness about things.
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