Jenni Dutton’s Dementia Darnings comprise a series of large works formed with running stitch that explore the effect of the condition on both her mother and herself. Jenni says the Darnings became the constant thread binding her life together and stopping it from falling apart. “How will I unpick my life from my mum’s life?”, she asks as the years pass. 

The Somerset-based, multi-media artist wanted to evoke the sense of disjointedness and abstraction, of displacement and insecurity that her mum’s dementia aroused in her – and she has certainly succeeded. 

“There is a fascination with the very gradual, slow process of building the layers of threads until they become closely interwoven; I’m working at ways to describe the harshness of dementia, exposing the loss associated with the condition, the unravelling of the personality and eventual emptiness,” she writes in her diary.

The Darnings have been exhibited throughout the UK, in Dublin, the Hague and China, with plans to show them in the United States and Australia in 2022. Jenni tells me that people’s reaction to them has been extraordinary and continues to move her. 

You can see these on Jenni’s website 

atwww.jennidutton.com/dementiadarnings 

and on Instagram at Jenni Dutton 9342 

https://www.instagram.com/jennidutton9342/?hl=en

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