Skip to content

Daphne Wright

Gathering Atmospheres

Niamh Campbell has written Gathering Atmospheres, a text as a reply to a number of explorative conversations between Daphne Wright and Katie Watchorn facilitated by The Douglas Hyde Gallery’s Response Series in conjunction with the exhibition From Here to There.

Over the course of six meetings and conversations between Daphne Wright and Katie Watchorn, a form of archaeological uncovering took place, a mapping of intellectual and visual interpretation, examining traces left by the past, and an attempt to write an interpretation of present culture, atmosphere and shared knowledge. Niamh’s text is available to read in full at the gallery. 

The presence of Trinity College Dublin, the work’s containment within Trinity, the beef fat latched with functional certainty to Trinity, feels significant. Old weekday is matter, in a way, clinging to mind, putting the rural on display for the metropolis without intending anything pastoral, bucolic, or even familiar – in its melting suggestiveness, it is more like science fiction. One thinks of Flann O’Brien, of The Third Policeman in particular, a novel about tin-headed, inscrutable, notionally human policemen-entities: of murders and alternate reality and the atomic interpenetration of man and bicycle when man is riding bicycle down rutted, post-independence, country roads. This blending of postcolonial dislocation and theoretical physics is deliberate: O’Brien, a civil servant, knew all about Schrödinger.”

Niamh Campbell, Gathering Atmospheres (excerpt), 2022.

About the Writer
About the Artists
About the Response Series
Image Credit

Upcoming Events

Uri Aran
In conversation with Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith

The Douglas Hyde is very pleased to announce an In Conversation event where critic and curator, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith will talk to Uri Aran about his practice and his exhibition Take This Dog for Example. The talk will take place on Saturday, 1 April at 2 pm at the Robert Emmet Lecture Theatre, Arts Block, […]

Art & Ideas

Artists present us with new perspectives on the world we live in. Explore the exciting ideas behind our programmes, hear more from the artists we work with and discover new ways of engaging with art.

Art & Ideas into your inbox