Remai Modern’s Connect Gallery transforms into working print studio
For immediate release — April 4, 2024
SASKATOON, CANADA — The latest exhibition in Remai Modern’s Connect Gallery has transformed the space into a working print studio. Live Editions: Jillian Ross Print gives visitors the chance to see how prints are produced from start to finish and shines a light on the collaborative process between artist and printmaker.
Jillian Ross is a Saskatoon-based printmaker. This exhibition centres around her longstanding collaboration with renowned South African artist William Kentridge. Their latest work together is a large-scale and highly complex photogravure series consisting of over 30 plates.
Live Editions explores and celebrates the significance of Ross’s work as a collaborative printmaker in the production of the yet unpublished series by Kentridge.
“We can’t wait for visitors to experience this unique exhibition. Jillian Ross and her team will use the space as they would their own studio, giving people the opportunity to see the printmaking process up close and to interact with an expert in this dynamic art field,” said Bevin Bradley, Assistant Curator.
Live Editions will also demonstrate Ross’ collaboration with Saskatoon-born artist Wally Dion during an intensive two-week residency in the gallery from July 17 to 28. Jillian Ross Print began working with Dion in 2022 on the artist’s first printmaking work. Ross and Dion will showcase the experimental and technical aspects of developing a work together, which brings together diverse elements of Dion’s practice including drawing, painting, sculpture, and textile.
In addition to the print studio itself, the exhibition also features recently published works by Jillian Ross Print with a focus on Kentridge’s Studio Life Gravures series, a film by William Kentridge and Joanna Dudley, and Dion’s Prairie Braids.
Live Editions will open on April 5 at 7 PM with a Studio Party. Visitors are invited to join in an evening of good conversation, great music, and refreshments. The public is also invited to take part in a Collaborative Print Workshop Tour with Ross on April 6 at 2 PM, where she will provide insight into the collaborative aspects of this project. Admission for both events is by donation.
Live Editions is on view from April 5 to August 11. On May 10, Remai Modern opens a related exhibition, Life in Print: William Kentridge and Pablo Picasso, in the museum’s Picasso Gallery.
Works from Kentridge’s the Universal Archive will be presented alongside selections from Remai Modern’s comprehensive holding of Picasso’s linocuts. The exhibition highlights
remarkable parallels between the two artists including a prolific practice, multi-disciplinary approach to artmaking, and personas that precede the work. They are also brought together in this exhibition by their extraordinary ability to pivot the medium of linocut through absolute trust in the potential of collaboration and experimentation.
The Universal Archive began as small ink drawings Kentridge created while developing his Norton lecture series for Harvard University. Carved meticulously in linocut by a team of printers led by Jillian Ross at David Krut Workshop in Johannesburg, the works are printed on non-archival dictionary papers. The result is an illusion of effortlessness achieved with luscious ink unabsorbed by aging papers. The Universal Archive incorporates themes from Kentridge’s productions (cats, coffee pots, nude figures), and addresses both his musings and his mistrust of certain objects. The Universal Archive originated as skepticism about certainty in art processes, a thread continuous to his practice and one that reappears in his Studio Life Gravures series, as an examination of the creative process.
Life in Print: William Kentridge and Pablo Picasso is organized by Remai Modern, thanks to the generous loan of the previously curated exhibition, William Kentridge’s Universal Archive presented at The Gund at Kenyon College. This loan is also possible thanks to the generosity of David Krut Projects, Johannesburg/New York.
About the Artists
Jillian Ross is a Canadian collaborative printmaker who began working with William Kentridge in 2006 while Master Printer at David Krut Workshop in Johannesburg. Working together for the last 17 years, Ross and Kentridge have produced over 190 works. Ross now continues her collaborations from her Saskatoon studio – Jillian Ross Print.
William Kentridge is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre, and opera productions. His method combines drawing, writing, film, performance, music, theatre, and collaborative practices to create works of art that are grounded in politics, science, literature, and history, yet maintaining a space for contradiction and uncertainty.
Wally Dion is a Saskatoon-born artist of Saulteaux ancestry living and working in Upstate New York. Working in numerous media including painting, drawing and sculpture, his art is concerned with issues of identity and power; it includes both representational and abstract geometric works.
About Remai Modern
Remai Modern is situated on Treaty 6 Territory and the Traditional Homeland of the Métis. We pay our respects to First Nations and Métis ancestors and reaffirm our relationship with one another.
Remai Modern is a new museum of modern and contemporary art in Saskatoon. The museum presents and collects local and international modern and contemporary art that connects, inspires and challenges diverse audiences through equitable and accessible programs.
Open since October 2017, Remai Modern is the largest contemporary art museum in western Canada and houses a collection of more than 8,000 works, including the world’s foremost collection of Picasso linocut prints.
Remai Modern would like to acknowledge the contributions of the Frank & Ellen Remai Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, SaskCulture through the Sask Lotteries Fund, SK Arts and the City of Saskatoon.
For additional information contact:
Stephanie McKay, Communications Manager
smckay@remaimodern.org
306.975.2242