In 2022, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the inception of his Yawnder series, Jay Dart exhibited new drawings alongside rarely-exhibited pieces from this body of work in a touring exhibition titled Ten Hundred Years of Yawns & Dust. This tour featured stops at Galerie Youn, Slate Gallery as well as the Art Gallery of Northumberland. This series features the exploits of his alter ego, Jiggs, and a cast of wanderers in a whimsical mindscape through which a narrative continues to evolve about the mystical nature of inspiration, the quest for innovative creation, and the dissemination of ideas. Within this conceptually layered world, Dart explores themes of identity, innocence lost/recovered, isolation, ecology, and interconnection in modern society. 

Among the newest works featured at Galerie Youn, the first stop on the tour, was a series of drawings on panels where the compositions carry on from the front of the panels along the sides and continue onto the walls. The site-specific installation of these 10 drawings presents a continuous landscape of the notable sites within the semi-biographical world that Dart has explored… only this time the mystical dust storm of Vooka has blown in. The name for this atmospheric event references the concept of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) which has been used to describe the state of anxious, unpredictability that defines the “new normal” of our times. The wanderers in this mythical world who have been figuratively pondering what’s “in the air” are now also contending with what’s literally in their airborne surroundings.

Among the new works featured at Slate Gallery, the second stop on the tour, was an installation titled Out On the Planes, in which he continued to find new approaches to presenting his drawings so that the scenes extend beyond the picture plane. Each of the five pieces in this installation carry on from the front of the panels, along the sides, and continue onto the walls, with drawing in between them to present conjoined scenes from a new found part of the Yawnderverse called the Planes. Here, Dart is exploring his fascination with other planes of existence as he continues to contemplate the role of the artist in contemporary culture.

For his solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Northumberland, I am exhibiting new works alongside a selection of pieces from recent chapters in the Yawnder series. The new pieces include drawings on paper from Chapter VI: Return to Elsewheres and drawings on canvas for an installation titled Amongst the Dust. For this installation, he continues his recent interest in site-specific works that include wall drawing in between the works on panel in an effort to create more immersive experiences within the Yawnder landscape.

The newest drawings that made up Gone Home – Jay Dart’s second solo exhibition at Gallery Jones in 2023 – follow Jiggs, the protagonist and Dart’s alter-ego, as he returns to where his odyssey began as a changed man in an altered landscape. The title of the show can be read in two ways. First, as the action to describe where Jiggs headed, as in “Where did Jiggs go? He’s gone home.” The second reading suggests that the place he’s returning to is not his actual home but rather his ‘gone home’; that other place we can go that is within, that is with us no matter where we venture.

For quite some time now, Jiggs has been wandering far and away, to Yawnder and Beyawnder, up on the Unknowns, in the Old Fields, and out on the Planes. Amongst the haze of dust and yawns that permeates the region of Yawnder in this chapter of Jiggs’ journey, we see him encountering a pack of wanderers making their way up the mountain further into this unknown world as he heads in the opposite direction in Back Whence. Clear Em Out features Jiggs clearcutting a tract of his Geistwoods with the help of a few other fellers while the giant Foremom’s stack these mighty timbers amid fires blazing on the horizon in Stockpilers. It appears that it’s time for Jiggs to return home and pause awhile. However, a sign from above in Dust Don’t Settle reminds us that rest can only be a temporary state.