Oh to Believe in Another World: South African—Canadian Collaboration in Print

Curated by Steven Dixon & Luke Johnson 

Including works by:

Ambar Azcorra, Sean Caulfield, Wally Dion, Steven Dixon, Helen Gerritzen, Jon Goodman, Marcel Houston-McIntosh, Liz Ingram, Luke Johnson, Sarah Judge, Walter Jule, Roxy Kaczmarek, William Kentridge, Sbongiseni Khulu, Marlene MacCallum, Olivia McSweeney Arau, Holly de Moissac, Monique Martin, Puleng Mongale, David Morrish, Nasibeh Nasibi, Marilène Oliver, Kelsey Pavier, Hannah Penney-Duke, Daniela Schlueter, Marc Siegner, Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, Angela Snieder, Madeline Sturm, Saba Tensae, Alex R.M. Thompson, Zhané Warren, Bevan de Wet

May 20 - June 21, 2025

Reception: Thursday May 22, 7-9 p.m. | View the PDF e-vite

During the summer of 2020, the unique circumstances of the unfolding pandemic led to an ongoing collaboration between the printmaking division at the University of Alberta and Jillian Ross, a master printer at David Krut Workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa from 2003 through 2020.

Exploring the possibilities of working in photogravure allowed Ross and Kentridge to continue their creative relationship from afar. Contact was made with Steven Dixon, artist and technical demonstrator in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta, and an expert in the production of copperplate photogravure. Over the last four summers, Ross and Dixon have worked on print projects for William Kentridge, including two large-scale photogravure prints which are among the largest ever made.

In addition to the work with Kentridge, Ross has expanded the group of artists she is working with to include South African artists Puleng Mongale and Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, and Canadian artist Wally Dion, each of whom has been able to explore their work using photogravure through her collaborative efforts.

Oh to Believe in Another World: South African—Canadian Collaboration in Print, brings together a broad selection of artworks made through the process of photogravure including works by Faculty, students, and alumni of the University of Alberta as well as artists from across Canada and South Africa.

Riverdale ArtWalk 2025

Join me May 31 & June 1, 2025 at Jimmie Simpson Park, Queen Street East Arts District, Toronto (map)

A selection of original, hand-printed etchings will be for sale (see my etchings page for works available). Etchings will be sold both framed and unframed. All payment methods will be accepted (debit, credit, cash).

Free admission - Rain or Shine!

Saturday May 31, 11 am - 6pm
Sunday June 1, 10 am - 5 pm
872 Queen Street East, Toronto

The Shifting Point: New Expressions in Canadian Printmaking

Time: February 6 – March 8, 2025
Opening of the exhibition: February 6, 2025 at 5 pm
Location: Vilnius Academy of Arts exhibition halls “Titanikas”, Vilnius, Lithuania

Project organizers: Vilnius Academy of Arts in collaboration with the Artist's Book Museum Vilnius.
Project curator: Prof. Emeritus Walter Jule, Canada
Project coordinator in Vilnius: Prof. Kęstutis Vasiliūnas, Lithuania

Artwork thumbnail: Sean Caulfield

“The Shifting Point: New Expressions in Canadian Printmaking” – this is the first part of the international Graphic Art Project "Lithuania – Canada". After the exhibition of Canadian artists in Lithuania in 2025 at "Titanikas", in 2026 we are planning an exhibition of Lithuanian graphic art in Canada.

“The second-largest country in the world, Canada boasts a population of forty-one million, 50 percent of whom are immigrants or children of immigrants. It is also a northern country, and temperatures can drop as low as -40 degrees Celsius in winter.

Since the nation’s founding in 1867, Canadian artists have drawn freely on their multicultural heritage while acknowledging the critical and market dominance of American art movements and competing “isms.”

After suffering the chaos of World War II, Eastern Europeans realized the portability of prints could provide a convenient format for the exchange of ideas across hardening borders. The visionary initiatives that gave birth to the first open-juried international print biennial in Ljubljana in 1955 soon inspired similar efforts in Kraków, New Delhi, Tokyo, and beyond.

These exhibitions enabled artists around the world to discover the diversity and depth of world graphic traditions, and their catalogues captured new trends and innovations as they developed.

The ensuing global proliferation of print biennials also showcased and encouraged new technological developments, including the integration of photomechanical extensions in etching, lithography, screen-printing, and even woodcut.

Relatively unhindered by tradition and marketing strategies, Canadian artists were quick to adopt new techniques and concepts. They became known for their hybrid works, which combine historical artisanal approaches with photomechanical and digital technology, creating surprising art that defies convention and categorization.

Most Canadian artists eschew the idea of a “technological imperative,” however, viewing printmaking as an opportunity to shift between the historical and the new, the deliberate and the spontaneous while gaining creative agility through the engagement of process as medium.

This exhibition showcases more than eighty works by eighteen multi–award-winning Canadian artists who range in age from thirty-three to eighty-four. From small-scale photogravures to large digital murals, the works address a wealth of themes, including our relationship to natural and manufactured environments; ancestral origins; loss and grief; language and perception; social chaos; pop, science fiction, advertising; and the philosophical and metaphysical.

Here, it is possible to witness a new vitality in Canadian art that is increasingly acknowledged to be part of a global shift, repositioning print-based works from the sidelines to the centre of our ever-evolving image culture.”

Prof. Emeritus Walter Jule, Canada

Participating artists:

Rebecca Beardmore
Derek Besant
Mark Bovey
Sean Caulfield
Briar Craig
Steven Dixon
Karen Dugas
Alexandra Haeseker
Florin Hategan
Walter Jule
Davida Kidd
Guy Langevin
David Morrish
Andrea Pinheiro
Marc Siegner
Angela Snieder
Otis Tamasauskas
Tracy Templeton

MISTAKEN POINT

January 10 - February 3, 2024
​Announcing: MISTAKEN POINT by Angela Snieder & Morgan Wedderspoon
​at HOOPLA PRESS & GALLERY (@hooplapress2021) with thanks to @canada.council, @st_michaels_printshop & @snapgallery
Reception: January 11, 6pm

“Everything [there] knows how to be low, how to hug the rock and hunch against the wind. By the time you get to Mistaken Point, you will have already grown accustomed to looking down and looking closely, especially if it happens to be foggy, which is likely. You will also, probably, have had enough experience being buffeted by wind to appreciate the ecosystem’s preference for a horizontal lifestyle.”
— Don McKay

Building on the ideas of poet Don McKay in his essay Ediacaran and Anthropocene: Poetry as a Reader of Deep Time, MISTAKEN POINT by Angela Snieder and Morgan Wedderspoon is an ongoing print-based collaborative project which plays with the concept of survival in the so-called Anthropocene. It asks what ways of thinking and relating may be vital to sustain life at a time when humankind’s impact on Earth’s systems threatens extinction.

​Toronto Online Art Fair

July 2 - 11, 2021
I'm happy to share again this year that I'll be participating in the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair. A selection of my print work will be available for purchase (online booth only) through the TOAF Website. The participating artists are limited to 10 works on display at any given time, so if you see something of interest on my website or instagram please don't hesitate to contact me for details.  

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