JANE DIXON

Ground Plan IV (from Regeneration) 2006
Graphite on paper 59.5 cm x 84.5 cm
Purchased by the British Museum, 2007

Current exhibition:

Works from Regeneration, May 1st - June 14th 2008

Broadbent, 25 Chepstow Corner, Chepstow Place, London W2 4XE Tel: 0207 229 8811

Recent exhibition:

Regeneration: Works on Paper, Tokyo Gallery +BTAP, Tokyo, Japan. January 16th - February 9th 2008.

Quotation from review, The Japan Times, Thursday 17th January, 2008:

"Japan is the land of regeneration. The ongoing cycle of earthquakes, volcanoes, typhoons and tsunami, together with the devastation of conventional and atomic warfare during World War II, has left Japan more profoundly conscious of the fragility and transience of the physical world than perhaps any other country.

For her second solo exhibition at Tokyo Gallery +BTAP, titled Regeneration, Jane Dixon is showing her newest works on paper - drawings and prints that explore the dichotomy of absence and presence, the traces left behind that remind us of our vulnerabilities as individuals and as a social system. The Ground Plan and Floor Plan drawings (....) which feel like ancient blueprints for an unfamiliar location are a visual and temporal abstraction of memory and physicality.

The Braille Suite of embossed etchings - shown with a corresponding series of rubbed drawings made especially for this exhibition - are also based on raw information about the urban environment and filtered through layers of conceptual abstraction. The Braille is a transcription of texts taken from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, however, in Dixon's words, the process 'translates' them into something untouchable, unreadable and enigmatic." Frances Manabe

Catalogue quotations about previous work:

"What interests me is that you are able to produce images that appear calm out of such intensity or violence, yet that remain threatening. It is that sense of vulnerability combined with a troubling vitality that is fascinatng because so fragile, as if you have caught a moment of tension or poise between two such opposing states."

Simon Groom in conversation with Jane Dixon for the catalogue to accompany the exhibition 'Solid Sate: reflections upon the real' which she exhibited in and curated for Kettles' Yard, Cambridge in 2001.

"Her work is about vulnerability. It is about the human body, although the body is almost never present. It adresses the fears and sensations that the body engenders and arouses. Her paintings map the extent of our fragility and articulate the sensation of containment within fallible, organic, imperfect bodies. They speak eloquently of simple but important truths: of our need to hide our failings, to protect our weakness: they negotiate fundamental human paranoias - medical invasion, decrepitude, the threat of violence - and our fear of what is inevitable."

Ben Tufnell, curator at Tate Britain (taken from Under False Colours, 2004)

Catalogues available:

Under False Colours Published by Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham, with essay by Ben Tufnell, text is in both English and Japanese.   ISBN 1 900809 21 4

Parallel Objects  Published by Kettle's Yard, Castle Street, Cambridge CB3 OAQ
ISBN 0 907074 83 9

Solid State  Published by Kettle's Yard, Telephone - 01223 352124
ISBN 0 907074 89 8

The Invisible City Published by EMH Arts, 2007 - Telephone The Eagle Gallery 0207 833 2674
ISBN 978 0 9554046 3 4

Regeneration - an illustrated programme for the exhibition of works on paper which took place in January/February 2008 is available from Tokyo Gallery +BTAP. Contact via info@tokyo-gallery.com or www.tokyo-gallery.com

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