From Both Sides Now
27th May – 14th June 2025
The ArtHouse, 65 Eastbank Street, Tues thro Fri 10.00 – 15.00 and Sat 11.00 – 16.00.
A joint exhibition by talented local artistic sister and brother, Carole & Martin Dawber will open at The ArtHouse in Southport at the end of May, with a display including stitch, collage and ceramics, each reflecting their individual perspectives on contemporary arts and crafts.
Now living in Birkdale, both are graduates of the celebrated Liverpool Art School (now Liverpool John Moores University) from the 1970’s – a time when former student, John Lennon’s initials were still in evidence carved into the Lecture Theatre desks.
Carole describes her time at Liverpool as ‘magical’.
“All I did all day was draw and paint, work with fabric, design clothes and be pioneering by taking risks and having fun. The most inspiring artists, tutors and musicians surrounded me. It was awesome. There were no limits to imagination. I met such amazing people, all of whom just loved creativity for the idea of invention.”
Education was also key to pointing Martin towards the right path.
“I owe where I am today to my six formative years in art education. It subsequently spring boarded me all over the world and I would always urge anyone to stick to their dreams and do the same.”
During the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, Carole’s research into fabric dying from natural sources, while still a student at college, earned her the accolade of being awarded a lifetime Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts. Carole’s final garment collection at Liverpool was subsequently put on display in London at the Dickens and Jones store in Regent Street and was applauded by fashion editor, Prudence Glynn, in a TIMES’ editorial. However, she confesses that her lasting memory will always be selling knitwear samples at the ‘INDIGO’ trade fair in Paris to none other than the Yves Saint Laurent Couture studio. “I loved every minute of it!”
Attention to colour has always played a vital role in Carole’s design ethic.
“I love the alchemy of colouring cloth through dye. Even before undertaking my journey through Art School I learned to stencil and print images on my own clothes. Using my mum’s twin tub washing machine (causing a myriad of tints in the weekly white washing load!) I experimented with very rudimentary tie-dye techniques. The Aladdin’s cave that the Dye Lab opened up at the Art School was just further encouragement in my need to colourise fabrics for my art practice. The training I received in mixing commercial dyes, and extracting and experimenting with natural dye stuffs, has lead to a life long passion of transforming yarn and fabric into jewel-like colours.”
As a freelance fabric designer during the 80’s, Carole regularly exhibited at trade fairs in Europe. “Dying my own yarns rekindled my love for the inner glow that Acid Dyes brings to wool and silk fibres. The luminosity in the shades of colour that emerges within the fibres is so intense that it often takes my breath away. Often in a week of dying I would become addicted to what would emerge from the next dye test. It was at this point that I finally let go of the rulebook and allowed instinct and, perhaps experience, take over.”
Carole has now thrown off the commercial demands of industry and believes she has discovered her ‘own’ artistic voice that allows her to unrestrictedly articulate her personal concepts and ideas.
“Composition and content have been a struggle because design training focuses on pattern, rhythm and repeat rather than allowing a single unified image the indulgence of its own space. In developing ideas I usually work within linking themes. Often they overlap, or emerge from previous stimuli, that I have exploited throughout my creative journey.”
For her exhibited stitch pieces on display at The ArtHouse Carole advises:
“My starting point as always has to be revisiting my previous painting and collage research. My go to style of work when painting is always that of abstraction to convey feeling and mood more than reality. The trigger also must involve assessing earlier artwork and finding elements that can be developed further and accomplished in new ways. For reference, although I rely on previous sketchbooks, colour experiments and computer ideas, by not slavishly following them I’m letting the fabrics dictate their own form in loose landscape constructs so that the viewer can find their own story.”
She further explains: “My process for this recent series of work has been to create a palette of newly invented silk cloth, felted using a dry felting embellisher, that turns some of my vast range of dyed silk via fusing and felting into fabric sheets. I then employed these as fabric collages to shape the fractured Vorticism influenced landscapes. Using this technique helps drive and inform the dynamism of these freshly abstracted landscapes. The quick mark making achievable with paint I am able to translate through free machine stitch to create a distressed stitched line that generates less surface visibility by being buried in the construction of the pre-fabric. This allows me to ‘draw’ the rhythm of the composition but only hint at what ‘could be’ in the landscape for the viewer.”
Martin, best known as the international author of over 10 books including the BIG BOOK series (www.amazon.co.uk/martin-
“Opting for art at the Grammar School in Wigan was a not viewed as a serious career pathway, and it was only when I went on to Liverpool Art School and subsequently to The Royal College of Art in London, that I felt that I was in any way being taken seriously. My years in art education pointed me in the right direction. It never ceases to amaze me what a trigger that proved to be.”
Entering the world of ‘art’ from a sheltered and traditional academic background threw a lot of unpredictable surprises his way.
“The shock of being offered a drink of tea in a glass jam jar at my Art Foundation interview in Liverpool through to drinking a different beverage five years later with the likes of David Hockney at the RCA in Kensington Gore are memories that I will always hold dear.”
Although now ‘officially’ retired, Martin has no signs of letting up from his heater-skelter existence that has seen him conveying his skill across the world, from exhibitions across Europe to academic work at institutions in Istanbul and Singapore.
Currently, he has swapped his pen and paper for the modeling tools and wet clay on offer at Southport Contemporary Arts ClayWorks workshops which he attends weekly and where has generated the decorative bowls and vases that will be on display.
“Although I don’t possess any traditional training in ceramics (throwing on the wheel, etc) I enjoy the tactile and almost therapeutic value of working with your hands in wet clay. My hand-crafted bowls and vases, featuring contemporary patterning and glazing, could equally be well employed as wine-coolers and for housing fresh fruit or cut flowers”.
From Both Sides Now will be on display 27th May – 14th June 2025 at The ArtHouse, 65 Eastbank Street, Tues thro Fri 10.00 – 15.00 and Sat 11.00 – 16.00.