Jane Dixon

Images of tailor’s dummies, iron lungs, steam baths and rigid body-wear such as corsets, helmets and armour dominate Jane Dixon’s art. The control these structures exert upon the body evokes the constrictions imposed upon the process of artistic creation and the exceptionally painstaking methods by which she constructs each work.

Although Dixon’s work is haunted by the presence of the human body it is never actually represented. Instead, we are left with the empty containers that initially appear to be little more than inert and discarded shells marking the dimensions of organic and lived space. Dixon’s method of composition reflects this same organic process of construction. Her emphasis on process, and the emergence of form and colour is evident in the gradual unveiling of skins or layers of waxed and varnished paper. The suggestion of bruises or blemishes in the heavily textured and worked pieces creates an extraordinary sense of the lived and real, both pain and pleasure, as it exists in Dixon’s art.

Jane Dixon was the Kettle’s Yard and New Hall College Artist Fellow 2000-2001.