Susie Rose Dalton

Susie Rose Dalton is a visual artist. She uses simple and sensitive ways of working with materials to put form to tender experience and memory. Her work seeks to capture specific acts and periods of time in sculptural form, to either commit to permanent record or to release again as a representation of impermanence. Her work is informed by her academic background in archaeology, where she first encountered the power of sculpture in capturing personal and collective histories.

Her work in the exhibition explores dance as an activity which encompasses much of what it means to be ‘alive’ - living, breathing, and expressing oneself. Dance is an ancient, powerful act, featuring in every human culture and in our earliest art. It plays a central role in resistance, community, and connection. Attempting to untangle dance from any judgements, restrictions, and gazes that are foisted upon it, the work does not use video or photographic representations of dance or dancers. Instead, it uses a variety of sculptural media to record dance by abstract means. Rather than focusing on what dance looks like, the work focuses on what dance is: a creative act.

The exploration of dance as an act of being alive is set within a context of mortality and the records left behind by others. Featured in the show is a bronze cast of the last remaining square of dance floor used in the Beach Ballroom in Aberdeen from 1955 - 2010, highlighting the visible wear from the thousands of feet that danced on it.