AN exhibition of hand-stitched portraits inspired by the artist’s experience of caring for her mother with dementia opens at the Art Centre next week.
‘The Dementia Darnings’, by UK-based artist Jenni Dutton, begins on Monday.
To create the delicate portraits, Ms Dutton translated old family photos spanning her mother’s life onto bobinette netting.
She said: “As I began to have some understanding of the illness and how it manifested itself, we explored ways of engaging with the past.
“I started to use stitching to ‘draw’ likenesses of family members onto a sculpture of a long dress made from dress netting. My mum recognised these familiar faces and enjoyed watching me create these simple portraits.
“My aim was to reflect the love, memory and quiet loss I experienced as I observed her dementia develop.”
Having exhibited widely across the UK, Europe and China, Ms Dutton said that each piece took up to four months to create. She started the project in 2011 while looking at photo albums with her mother.
Ms Dutton will be talking about her exhibition, which runs until Saturday 28 June, at its launch on Monday at 5 pm.
