The Lives and Afterlives of Things

The Lives and Afterlives of Things

As part of Gallery Lates and in association with Unworlding, the solo exhibition by Patrick Hough, Dr. Noreen Giffney will present a special talk exploring the relationship between psychoanalysis, culture and the imaginative life of objects, images and environments.

Drawing connections between inner worlds and material worlds, the talk will consider how art can hold memory, desire, loss and transformation, offering audiences new ways of engaging with the uncanny, the symbolic and the emotional dimensions of contemporary life. In dialogue with themes present in Unworlding including ecological precarity, hidden histories and the afterlives of things, this event opens a space for reflection on how artworks shape experience and meaning.

Dr Noreen Giffney is a writer and psychoanalytic psychotherapist based in County Donegal on the northwest coast of Ireland. She is the author of the book, The Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis: Cultural Experiences and the Clinic (Routledge 2021), and the author and/or editor of additional articles and books on psychoanalysis, gender and sexuality studies, and the arts, culture and mental health. She is the director (with Allen Fatimaharan) of Cultural Encounters (2026), an animated short film about the cultural nourishment and protection provided by our experiences with the arts and culture. Noreen is the editor-in-chief (with Emmanuelle Smith) of New Associations psychoanalytic magazine, published three times per year by the British Psychoanalytic Council. She was a member of the creative team (led by Prof Jill Bennett) for World Comes Alive (fEEL 2025), the first virtual reality experience underpinned by psychoanalytic thinking. She lectures and conducts research at Ulster University, Belfast. Noreen is an associate member of the performance arts organisation, Bbeyond. In her spare time, she takes opera singing lessons. https://www.ulster.ac.uk/staff/n-giffney