ELORA – Guelph artist and printmaker Carolyn Riddell muses and makes work about place and memory. Her new solo exhibition at the Elora Centre for the Arts, Common Threads: A Printmaker’s Portal reveals a reverence for the history of things, and the stories they tell.
The exhibition explores printmaking, stitch work and assemblages using ready made materials.
This “portal” into her world of process, collecting and storytelling includes prints, wallpaper, weaving, thread work and collected artifacts.
“In the act of printmaking, I use a wide variety of processes to affect the printing plate, the physical act of pressure, the pulling or peeling transfers of ink onto a surface” says Riddell.
Riddell’s suite of woodblock prints uses configured scraps of wood and the Chine Collé process to make circular images reminiscent of mandalas, parasols, kaleidoscopes and gardens.
Riddell’s collected lace series and mixed media work elaborate on the idea of memory and archive.
Of particular note, is an installation dangling from the ceiling, lingering over the top of a wood table adorned with hoya plant florets and an heirloom photograph.
“Memory, relationship, poetry and tactility fare into the objects and prints, paying a kind of tribute or breakthrough into an object’s placement or identity” explains Riddell.
“These elements represent possibilities for recollection” she says.
Common Threads opens in the gallery on Nov. 24 and runs until Jan. 22, 2023.
Admission to the gallery is free.
The artist would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council for supporting her exhibition project.
This exhibition has been curated by Annette Hansen, thanks to support from the Ontario Trillium Foundation Community Building Fund.
This funding has been instrumental in supporting the Art Centre’s emergence from the pandemic to deepen the curation of exhibitions.
