In the elegant atmosphere of Golden Square, we are witnessing a quiet but unsettling transformation. Frith Street Gallery is hosting Daphne Wright’s latest exhibition “Expectations”, which encompasses her recent body of work and has been eagerly anticipated following her major presentation at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Throughout her career, Wright has traced the quietly anxious concerns of human existence using a wide range of materials—from aluminium foil to unfired clay, from sound installations to video. This exhibition is no exception; the artist invites us onto that hazy border between childhood and adulthood, and between domestic intimacy and public identity.
From the Kitchen Table to the Living Room: The Solid State of Growing Up
At the centre of the exhibition stands a monumental Jesmonite installation meticulously cast from life: Sons and Couch (2025). In this work, Wright returns to her two sons, whom she had previously modelled at the threshold of adolescence in 2011 and 2014. This time, however, the children are now on the brink of adulthood.
The Space of Change: The centre of family life has shifted from the kitchen table in her earlier exhibitions to the sofa in the living room.
Frozen Time: The hardness of Jesmonite solidifies and freezes the fluid possibilities and hidden anxieties of growth into a rigid moment. Through these solidified instants, Wright questions the construction of individual identity and the merciless passage of time.
The Anatomy of Fragility: Unfired Clay and the Refrigerator
In contrast to the hard and durable Jesmonite works, Fridge Still Life (2021) is a pure exercise in fragility. The unfired clay that Wright has been using for fifteen years creates an unsettling feeling that the piece could crumble at any moment.
“Refrigerators are designed to slow down the effects of time, yet they are also strangely intimate and revealing personal spaces.”
In this installation, we see a ready-to-roast chicken, a bottle of drink, and five melancholic asparagus spears—pointing to the ordinary yet deeply meaningful necessities of domestic life. The depiction of a device that tries to stop time using a material inherently doomed to dry out and crack presents the exhibition’s theme of transience in its purest form.
Silhouettes of Childhood Dreams
Another poignant section of the exhibition consists of small animal sculptures inspired by the old newspaper posters that once adorned the walls of Wright’s sons’ bedroom. Butterflies and dog figures have been recreated as low-relief three-dimensional forms. These works stand out as an attempt to give concrete shape to the fleeting impulses of childhood imagination.
In this universe where objects and animals stand in for people, Daphne Wright reminds us not only of what we are expecting, but also of what we are turning into while we wait.
Until 18 April 2026
