“Open Edition”

Prints are marks made by pressure. In the physical sense, that force is applied by the artist’s body or a machine, weighing down on an inked surface to transfer graphic information to a blank support, and, in theory, infinitely reproducible. The notion of being “made by pressure”— something that is weighted, tensed or compelled—can be expanded metaphorically. Creative or communicative acts are often described as being derived from a source of force—an internal drive, or external inspiration—one that is undeniable, or insatiable until exorcised via a tangible medium. Prints are weighted, too, by the history of their medium. Derived initially by a desire to express information to the largest public possible, they can and have transmitted dogmatic, rhetorical, religious and political messages in far reaches via books, leaflets, t-shirts, record sleeves, road signs and more. The sprawl of the medium is now so pervasive and varied in its process that an exhibition that attempts to contain it seems like a vastly impossible task. In “Open Edition,” at Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG), however, the curatorial team of Heather Anderson and Sandra Dyck seems to have successfully captured it, while allowing for its innumerable qualities to be expanded and elucidated in a most thoughtful way.

The exhibition’s title simultaneously refers to the unlimited manner in which a print run can be released, lightly riffs on a contemporary and growing prevalence of user-driven digital software and indicates the very literal way the curators released themselves unfettered into their vaults. From there, they pulled forth some 100 pieces from the gallery’s collection, which complemented print-based installations by six invited contemporary artists: Ciara Phillips (Glasgow), Ningiukulu Teevee (Kinngait), Mohamed Thiam (Ottawa), Guillermo Trejo (Ottawa), Étienne Tremblay-Tardif (Montreal), Ericka Walker (Halifax) and Melanie Yugo (Ottawa). Sprawling over both levels of the gallery, with works mounted on every wall, perched on the floor and even hung from banisters and railings, the layout could have run the risk of dissolving into visual cacophony. But, instead, there is spaciousness to the installation, an accessibility and freedom through which visitors are invited to approach the show and to contemplate, with a slight sense of adventure, the notion of what a print can be, and the way in which an artist or gallery can choose to display them.

A floor-to-ceiling wall treatment by Ciara Phillips greets us with a brash and bold explosion of colour—chunky blocks of cobalt blue, emerald green and black and white checkerboards are stamped monolithically up the double-height atrium, making suitable use of this idiosyncratic entryway. Spiritedly splitting open the parameters of printmaking, the artist enlarges its layered processes in both the analogue and digital realms, while using this patchwork as the backdrop for hanging her photoetchings and monoprints. Among them are Freedom of the Press, 2017; Laura Looking, 2015; Every Woman a Signal Tower, 2015; and Emily Reading, 2017. This constellation is an excellent example of her use of printmaking as an indexical medium and sets the tone of the show.

Moving leftward through the space, Mohamed Thiam’s Flash Sale, 2015, shouts out from one pillar plastered with posters in black ink on red, pink and yellow papers. Here, a man’s open mouth soundlessly hawks his goods from a dazzling visual field that mimics the display and omnipresence of advertising. Nearby, Société écran, a series of striped textiles—scarves, a button-up shirt and a flag-like partition—by Étienne Tremblay- Tardif, hangs like fabric remnants of censored newsprint, harking back to the way information can and cannot be shared within a global economy.

For his contribution, A Galaxy Reconfigured, 2017, Guillermo Trejo has developed a four-sided filing cabinet of curiosities that anchors this lower level. It contains a rigorously researched selection of historical French prints, which he has categorized and overlaid with specific aperture windows within its drawers, awaiting animation by the visitor’s hand. Responding to the practical impossibility of accessing or presenting many artworks in a gallery’s large permanent collection, this sculptural piece belies the curatorial project at work here, as, in fact, Anderson and Dyck have populated the walls surrounding these four artists’ works with an provocative selection of two-dimensional works culled from their storage units. Pieces by Suzy Lake, Jessie Oonark, Barbara Astman, Rita Letendre, Greg Curnoe, John Hartman, Tony Urquhart, Leslie Ried, Yoshisuke Funasaka, Jerry Grey, Zin Taylor, Jamasie Pitseolak, Vera Greenwood and Noboru Sawai, to name only a few, astutely echo or reinforce their formal and thematic concerns, and open a dialogue between past and present creators.

On the atrium level, a persuasive voice of command bursts from Ericka Walker’s 1950s-inspired posters that pair powerful text— “bounty and benevolence,” “time” and “yield”—with hand-drawn images of industrial machinery exposing Canada’s settler-colonial foundation, as underpinned by resource extraction. In an appropriately subtle counterpoint, the eight works installed adjacently by Ningiukulu Teevee announce the continued vibrancy of contemporary Inuit narratives, where fashion, the animal realm and shamanism spring forth in her striking, illustrative style, while Melanie Yugo’s Pieces of the Past, Fragments for the Future, 2017, presented as an expanded artist’s book, luminously lays out the artist’s archival research into her family and cultural history. In its whimsy and structure, it reinforces the potential of prints to be platforms for critical discussion and storytelling.

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin’s Le vigilant, 1816, one of the oldest lithographs in the CUAG collection, anchors the exhibition. The silvery lithograph, which was made during a critical period in the history of the medium, marks the shift from a method of industrial reproduction to a major form of artistic expression. The power that prints have to ebb and flow between these two realms, their importance to each, and our continued reliance on them for both are laid clear here in “Open Edition,” an exhibition that is a tour de force. ❚

“Open Edition” was exhibited at the Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa, from June 5 to August 20, 2017.

Rhiannon Vogl is Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada.