DUST Rising: Every Other Seat

‘Every Other Seat’ by DUST Rising CIC artists, took place in Hanley’s Cultural Quarter to highlight the plight of the city’s theatres during Covid-19 restrictions after the first 2020 lockdown. The artists’ seats were walked out of the Regent Theatre during the two days and placed down Piccadilly to enable socially distanced viewing. The events, supported by Appetite, Stoke-on-Trent City Council and Stoke-on-Trent BID, also included live spoken word performances from several noted Staffordshire based poets.

In February 2021 The seats were moved into empty shop windows in the Roebuck Centre, Newcastle-under-Lyme during the second lockdown with the support of Appetite and Newcastle-under-Lyme BID.

Hecuba, Every Other Seat, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, 2020

Walking over the ashes

I have watched some people make the most of lockdown time for the last year to connect with their creativity, learn, develop or re-kindle skills they never knew they had or had long forgotten. Me…I’ve somehow lost my way. This is not good. I went into lockdown buckling under the pressure of trying to stay in an ill-fitting part-time job to pay the bills and furlough was a time for self-reflection and an opportunity to re-connect on some level with myself through a script-writing commission for BBC Bitesize. This confirmed that I could not risk my mental health any further by returning to the retail environment, added to which family demands became even greater and home-schooling three grandchildren beckoned. Meaningful creative output somehow seemed far away. Until the ever-supportive Black Country poets Emma Purshouse and Steve Pottinger dangled their ‘Arses from Elbows’ opportunity to tempt me out of the wallows.

The eight week course was a back to basics poetry writing series and provided me with a focus and discipline sadly missing at that time. This weekly focus on writing has remained through an incredibly supportive and open spin-off group of poets. We are following the brilliant Jo Bell’s ’52’ poetry writing prompts and have reached week 23 with the group still intact. It’s sometimes hard-going and, like all creative activities, can sometimes add to your caskets of self-doubt and insecurities. Last week’s prompt brought me out in a rash of philosophical Camus-esque self-questioning. But I keep at it! Unfortunately I’m still filling those aforementioned caskets, and increasingly concerned that I lack the skills and energy to find new ways of marketing whatever it is I do/did. The truth of it is I want me time, but I can’t afford it!

My entire career has relied on sharing my skills with others, generating ideas and motivating others to see the potential in themselves through creative activities. So how come I now struggle to motivate myself, listen to advice or simply relocate the self-discipline I treasured? I am trying to see this time as an opportunity to breathe and let things lie and not as being washed up on the shingle beach of failed artists. But the fact remains, I am too young to retire and feel too disconnected and too tired to dig deep. I am pleased for the opportunity to re-show ‘Hecuba’s Seat’ with DUST Rising’s Every Other Seat’ exhibition in Roebuck Shopping Centre in Newcastle, Staffordshire and fingers crossed this is also the re-start of clawing my way back to my creative self.

‘Hecuba’s Seat’ by Dawn Jutton from DUST Rising’s ‘Every Other Seat’ exhibition first shown (here) in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, 2020

Meanwhile, this seems to all be coming out in some fairly deep writing, as I realised when I shared this Week 22’s efforts at prose poetry with the group. I generally don’t feel the need to share new work (or blog ramblings come to that!) online, but today is different. Maybe tomorrow will bring a new Spring in my step…

Meanwhile, and finally, here’s the poem.

 I walk over the ashes
  
 I walk over the ashes of burnt earth to look at the edge of the world. 
 Unfurling my fingers, I stroke the beckoning abyss to calculate my worth, 
 my weight in gold, and trace the shape of the space I would leave.
When I look back, dust has settled in my footprints. In the distance, 
I see the tear-stained faces of children picking over the mounds of words 
I’d thrown into the smoke from fires lit to hide my journey.  I turn back to the abyss, 
lift my eyes to the past for an answer and take a step forward – 
but do not fall. In the ice-cold darkness, a ledge; a black viscous slick sucks me into itself,  
coats me in resilience and soothes my unsettled skin. 
  
I amble over acres of green fields and pick daisies to make a chain
that could anchor me to the future. My eyes sting with the brightness 
of their sun-kissed centres but I dry my tears with their soft white 
petals. I blow through blades of grass to call on the birds for answers,
but they know only their own song.  I sieve life-giving soil through my fingers 
to ground my insecurities and ask the divining branches to lend me their secrets, 
but both hide them in their core.  I wander until my feet ache 
with the weight of my questions, until the odour of ash leaves my skin and only tear-cut scars remain.
I swim under a waterfall of emotion, surface for a moment to fill my lungs 
  
 and scream.
   

Eleven Oranges

Dawn Jutton and Mal Dewhirst’s collaboration celebrated the one-year anniversary of the re-opening of Ingestre Orangery with a new installation re-configuring work created before and since the restoration.

Dawn’s new large digital photo-collage prints combine two series of photographs she took on visits to the Orangery eleven years apart.  Inspired by the Haikus she wrote during poetry workshops led by Mal last year, this work explores and re-frames the concept of ‘before and after’ photographs.

A new soundscape by Mal Dewhirst accompanied his sound piece ‘Missive Voices’ that featured poetry phone messages sent by poets thinking of Ing­­estre during the first 2020 Covid-19 lockdown.

The exhibition also included trowels stamped by artist Luke Perry, with words written by Mal, Dawn and visitors to Ingestre during the 2019 ‘Dialect of Digging’ workshops.

Eleven Oranges
Ingestre
Whispering Ashlar
 Square light beams off  walls 
 Urging greenery to spill free
   -  echoed green whispers
 Blossom notes dance free
 on soft ancestral birdsong
   - warm limestone ashlar
 Human croquet played
 under yew covered hoops
   - dance on sandstone steps 

Staffordshire Poetry

Dawn was commissioned by Staffordshire County Council to create a series of images in response to the online poetry collection. An exhibition in Stafford Library with limited edition free postcards launched the collection before the images toured Staffordshire libraries.

Dawn also led workshops with poets and the public to collaborate on on new images to add to the collection. The full collection of images and poems can be found at: https://staffordshirepoetlaureate.wordpress.com/staffordshirepoetrycollection/

DUST 2020

‘An Analysis of Dust Traces’, at PMAG, 2017

DUST 2020 was a series of exhibitions during 2017/18 by visual artists associated with the city to support Stoke-on-Trent’s city of Culture bid. The series took place in each of the six towns in heritage buildings at the heart of the community, aiming to make exhibitions accessible to raise the profile of visual art and artists in the city and to gain support for the bid.

Dawn is an associate artist with DUST Rising CIC and is one of the original members. She remains passionate about collaborating with other creatives to bring high quality visual arts programming and opportunities for the people city of Stoke-on-Trent.

I started my journey with DUST in the second exhibition at Tunstall Baths and developed the pieces in response to the heritage sites as the exhibition toured, leaving a trace of the previous work in each iteration. The final piece (l) was an autobiographical work that traced my associations with the city and included personal objects and images as well as elements of the pieces exhibited during the tour.

Longton Town Hall, 2018
‘Walks Interrupted; Trentham Series’, Fenton Library, 2018
Tunstall Baths, 2017
Wedgwood Institute, Burslem, 2017

Older Women Rock (the Potteries)

Dawn Jutton, is one of the inspirational and innovative artists, involved in the project for ‘Older Women Rock The Potteries!’. She worked alongside spoken word poet Leah Thorn on the project to reflect the ideas of “Older Women Rock The Potteries!” through artistic works created specifically for the project including the ‘Scarf’, ‘Blazer’, ‘Apron’ and ‘Suitcase.’ The stirring meaning that has been defined through this artwork is spectacular. 

Keele University Art Gallery


Older Women Rock Pink Link Blazer, 2017

Displacement: Gainsborough Works

a collaboration between Dawn Jutton & Eliza Bennett

Displacement, a site-specific installation, responds intuitively to the surrounding space, working with sculpture, photography, industrial refuse and discarded objects, repurposing the gathered materials, to compose a loosely choreographed site that explores the psychologically charged artefacts, evoking both loss and transformation, resulting in a meditation on displacement & belonging.

Evolving from our shared sympathy for the factory we came to occupy in its semi-abandoned state, this collaboration was sited in an old shoe factory and is a sort of geometry of echoes. Imbued with the passage of time the remnants we uncovered here have become talismans and relics of its story. The ghosts of the past seem rhythmically animated by the many feet that now come to dance upon the joists that once housed the machines and orderly rhythmic feet of productive workers.

from ‘Displacement’, Gainsborough Works, 2016
 Enter
 The long factory room, lengthening with each step, as it disappears in the darkness.
 The shadows of the day pass, across the room on the opposite wall. 
 Smudging fleeting marks, of lights caress upon the perceived inert totems.
 There’s a faint scent of something otherworldly, lingering…
 Fast diminishing with the odor of fresh paint and plaster.
 Falling light pools in black robes of fabric across the floor,
 Escorting the dead with its ghostly renderings
 Leaning against the invisible,
 Evening light arranges itself around the fallen leaves 
 And shadows lie at the feet of everything.
 
by Eliza Bennett

Looking for Venus

‘Looking for Venus’ is one in a series of work started in the early 2000s that explore an individual experience of a body and femininity that do not conform to a contemporary Western ideal-or modern Venus.

Conceptally and visually there are many similarities in my responses to the seemingly disparate themes of landscape and feminism, and I am exploring bringing these together to create a narrative around the pressure on women to conceal their ‘natural’ selves and signs of ageing.

Beyond the Surface

‘Beyond the Surface’ are two pieces created for the ‘Scapes exhibition at Guildhall Gallery, Stafford.

I re-visited Marston Road in the north end of Stafford, an area near to where I lived for many years, and where I have ben recording the changing architecture for three decades. The two pieces are constructed from found boxes and contain composite images inspired by the collected the memories of people I interviewed in the street and my own children’s memories. In ‘Beyond the Surface; No.1’

Whilst the found boxes relate on a personal level to a family history of regular unpacking and packing of boxes of belongings and childhood slideshows of our travels, the images explore different personal experiences and memories of a particular area at various times, encouraging a re-examining  of environment and personal relationships to space.

from ‘Beyond the Surface; No.1’
‘Beyond the Surface’ No.2

No Place Like Home

The fifties is an important decade for understanding the social history of women as the influence of the period remains in much of twenty-first century life, from mass consumerism and advertising, to the constant media examination of the role of women.

This series has been inspired by the contrasting messages from second world war posters, which encouraged women to adopt strong roles and jobs traditionally associated with men, to fifties advertising persuading women back into the feminine safety of the home, family and gleaming perfection. This was only achievable according to advertisers, of course, by purchasing the latest labour saving devices or wearing the newest fashions, but above all by putting the needs of your husband and children first. However, the reality behind this projected veneer of harmony and perfect family life was that many women missed the camaraderie and independence afforded them in the nation’s war effort.

In each of the images the kitchen utensils have been individually photographed and digitally  ‘cut out’, whilst the other elements have been manipulated from fifties advertisements and magazine articles. The text has also been ‘borrowed’ from period sources and re-used to create a new context.