Watch this professional recording of artist, Daphne Wright, speaking to Hugh Lane Gallery Director, Barbara Dawson, about her body of work and HLG’s latest acquisition Wright’s sculpture ‘Primate.’, July 2025.
Artist, Daphne Wright, speaks to Hugh Lane Gallery Director, Barbara Dawson, about her body of work and HLG’s latest acquisition, Wright’s sculpture ‘Primate.’ Introduced by Jessica O’Donnell, Head of Education at Hugh Lane Gallery.
Primate is one of a series of sculptures by Wright which explores the relationship between humans, animals and medicine. The sculpture was cast from a mould from a recently dead rhesus monkey at the scientific institution, Wisconsin National Primate Research Centre.
The artist explains, “To approach the problem of what we humans do by involving animals in our human life-saving research, the central act of making the artwork was to access this stage of the animal’s life-death via its direct physical form. The primate is our kin and our stand in. Not only in medicine but also for the heart and the imagination. It is an image of the human. Everything about how it might be like us is filled with pathos: its body, its proximity, its delicate biology, its expression. The rhesus monkey is our ancestor, our antecedent past and passed away, an object of reverie, honour, compassion and mourning.”
This notable addition to the collection continues to strengthen the Gallery’s mission of acquiring works by Irish and international artists to reflect evolving art practices. The display of Primate coincided with Wright’s solo exhibition Deep Rooted Things in The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, which was conceived in partnership with Hugh Lane Gallery.
