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 

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