Image: Gerhard Marcks House, Bremen
Irish artist Daphne Wright is presenting ‘Memory and Presence’, an exhibition of fragile installations, casts and modeled works at the Gerhard-Marcks-Haus in Bremen. The exhibition focuses on family, home, care work, transience and the ways people relate to animals. It runs from 12 July through 18 October 2026.
Wright, born in 1963, became known in the 1990s for fragile installations made from plaster and aluminium foil. Since the turn of the millennium, her practice has increasingly used the direct casting of people and animals as a starting point, alongside modeled works made from unfired clay. At the Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, the exhibition brings together these approaches to examine how materials, bodies and domestic situations can hold traces of lived experience.
The manufacturing process is central to Wright’s work. Casting preserves a physical impression while also drawing attention to the absence of the person or animal who served as its source. Unfired clay, by contrast, retains a sense of vulnerability and potential change. The museum’s presentation connects these material qualities with themes that include children, belonging, care and mortality.
A central work is ‘Sons and Couch’ (2025), a life-size, hand-painted Jesmonite cast of Wright’s two sons on a domestic sofa. The artist has cast her sons at several stages of their lives. In this latest work, they appear at the threshold of adulthood, captured in an intimate scene from everyday life. The museum describes the piece as a momentary image that preserves a fleeting memory of domestic experience. The work was made in hand-painted Jesmonite and is presented at life size.
Other works listed for the exhibition include ‘Deathmask, Horace, 14 June 2003’ (2003), made from painted plaster, and ‘Maple Row Sunflowers’ (2019), which combines unfired clay with various materials. Together with ‘Sons and Couch’, these works reflect Wright’s use of direct impressions, fragile substances and ordinary subjects to address the tension between presence and disappearance.
The exhibition will also be accompanied by a bilingual publication, ‘Daphne Wright. Memory and Presence’, published by Hirmer. A book presentation is scheduled for 9 September at 6pm at the Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, with Wright appearing alongside the British art historian and curator Penelope Curtis and Dr Arie Hartog, director of the museum. The event will be held in English, and the publication documents, among other material, the exhibition in Bremen.
Further programming includes ‘Wrights Poetry I, Music, Song and Lyric’ on 10 September, with a second part scheduled for 15 October. Wright’s selected poetry will be presented in German and English by singer Corinna Reynolds, accompanied by songs and guitar music from Ralf Winkelmann. A performance by the ensemble gassi gäng, titled ‘Stiller Tanz zwischen Präsenz und Abwesenheit’, is scheduled for 8 October within the exhibition. The presentation is supported by Culture Ireland/Cultúr Éireann, the Karin and Uwe Hollweg Foundation, the Christa and Nikolaus Schües Cultural Foundation and the Friends of the Gerhard-Marcks-Haus. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 6pm, with Thursday hours extending to 9pm.
