Underpinned by the language, tactility and intimacy of textile-based crafts, the works of Madeleine Joy Dawes initially masquerade as digital print. Closer inspection however reveals an intricate, tactile notational system, rendered with fibre-tipped pen within a precise grid, exposing the nuances and imperfections of the artist’s hand. Exploring the act of drawing as a record of time and space, this focus on temporality and repetition is what allows her to mediate rather than mirror her experience in the world, an attempt to coordinate thought and stabilize the disorder of the everyday.
Created over the preceding twelve months, Dawes’ presented body of drawings ‘trace where you’ve been’, becomes the conduit for her to map and reflect on her personal experiences throughout this time in synchronicity with the shifting seasons; the hope born in Spring, the exuberance of Summer, the acceptance of failures and successes in Autumn, and the loneliness of winter. Considering her drawing practice as something of a solitary durational performance, the completed works act as archive. They exist not as a snapshot of time, but a continual unfolding of.
With the arrival of Spring again with us and indicating a time of rebirth, does it not then also imply antecedent death? Of the opportunities granted throughout the season of renewal, Dawes considers whether year after year, we are everyday defining and existing within afterlives of our own choosing and construction, reincarnating annually in realms not nearly so daunting or unknown.