Tromsø-Montreal exchange project
Caroline Ariane Bergeron, Marie-Claude Gendron and Jocelyne Thibault
In residency at Prima Ink studio from June 1st to 30th, 2022
L’imprimerie launch its first ever international exchange in partnership with the Prima Ink print studio in Norway!
Congratulations to the artists selected in 2019, Caroline Ariane Bergeron, Marie-Claude Gendron and Jocelyne Thibault, who flew to Tromsø for a research-creation residency from June 1 to 30 at Prima Ink Print Studio. The exchange continued in September 2022 when L’imprimerie welcomed Kjellaug Hatlen Lunde, Tegson and Silvia Eliana Martinez, three Norwegian artists from Prima Ink for a one-month residency in its Montreal studios.
This residency were an opportunity to stimulate research, and to facilitate the transmission of knowledge regarding eco-friendly printing and photographic practices. In this regard, the jury was focus on projects proposing health-safe and environment-friendly techniques and materials.
Prima Ink is a printmaking studio in Tromsø, Norway, established in 2010 by artist Silvia E. Martinez with the support of the Norske Grafikere, the Norwegian Printmakers’ Association, the Norwegian Arts Council and the Troms County Council.Prima ink cares about the impact of the printmaking process at a global scale. One of its main goals is to become a greener place that uses less aggressive and more environmentally friendly materials and techniques.
Caroline Ariane Bergeron
During this one-month residency in Tromsø, the artist emboss prints on found or recycled paper. In an effort to be eco-responsible and reuse materials, and in such a way as to soak up the place of reception, she plans to make her own paper from materials found on the premises. In the form of writing, calligraphy, characters forming fictitious alphabets, Caroline Ariane works to create sets of symbols under the theme of the midnight sun, allowing itself to be inspired by the phenomenon of polar day characteristic of places located in high latitudes.
Crédit photo: Geneviève Cadieux-Langlois et Vidar Dons Lindrupsen
Caroline Ariane Bergeron is a Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist. She adopts slow working methods and prefers analog technologies to their contemporary equivalents, as well as a conscientious elaboration, in reaction to the ideology of growth that punctuates today’s world. Through sculpture, installation, print art and the artist’s book, she addresses themes of language and intimacy. Her work is both modern and nostalgic. She holds a BFA from Concordia University and has since participated in numerous artistic residencies, including Atelier de l’île (Val-David), Zocalo (Longueuil), Engramme (Quebec City), and Open Studio (Toronto). Her work is included in the heritage collections of prints and artists’ books of BAnQ, the art collection of the South-West borough of Montreal, as well as the Cégep du Vieux Montréal and Collège Ahunstic.
Photo credit: Kathleen Finlay
Marie-Claude Gendron
Un Précis du présent is a project that materializes her research on the notions of cycles, transformation and affects that are transposed into documents and objects. The artist explores the performativity of the image printed on paper that she makes from personal archives accumulated over the last ten years in travels and multiple creative residencies. Driven by a desire to recuperate the iconography of certain pasts, she experiments with different printing techniques (collagraphy, photopolymer, etc.) with used images from previous residencies and trips. She will “presentify” [1] the images by exposing them outdoors to bring in the natural elements. It would be a matter of weakening the images by the weather in order to create unpredictable and fortuitous alterations. From the new transformed paper supports and images, she produces artists’ booklets, “précis” that are produced in several copies.
[1] To make present to the conscience what is absent or belongs to the past. Source
Crédit photo: Geneviève Cadieux-Langlois et Vidar Dons Lindrupsen
Photo credit: Louis Rivest Henault
Through a multidisciplinary approach in action art, visual arts and media arts, Marie-Claude Gendron tries to identify the patterns of a community that is constantly being updated in the public, private and intimate spheres. She considers the potential of the archive and the ruin through implementations and in space that she sometimes presents as «living pictures». In the order of raw commemoration, his projects highlight the inevitable transformation of the existing. She is currently interested in the multiple possibilities of the book-object and the different forms of poetry in action. Born in Quebec City, Marie-Claude Gendron has participated in several residencies, exhibitions and events in Quebec, France, Brazil, Italy, Northern Ireland, Thailand, Mexico, Switzerland and soon in Norway. Her work has been the subject of solo and collective presentations and she has won several awards and creative scholarships. The artist holds a B.A. in visual and media arts from Laval University and a M.A. in visual and media arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal.
Jocelyne Thibault
The artist residency seeks to explore the printing possibilities offered by the inks and pulps of a specific daylily variety. This research initially makes it possible to better understand the effects of oxidation during drying, and the colour variations obtained through the use of different papers. Research determines the best natural agents to combine with the natural pulps and ink in order to make them compatible with printing processes that employ dies, particularly, screen printing and lino cutting. Throughout the course of this work, the artist produces a didactic notebook to summarise her analysis, so that these methods may be both accessible and reproducible.
Crédit photo: Geneviève Cadieux-Langlois et Vidar Dons Lindrupsen
Jocelyne Thibault is interested in the exchanges that art generates between individuals and sets up projects that emphasize the process of the encounter. Through fragment, sampling or accumulation, she draws on the iconography and gestures of the domestic to magnify the ordinary in an aesthetic that is constantly renewed through the artist’s book, photography, printing arts and sculpture. She lives and works in Laval, (Visual and Media Arts, UQAM, 2010). Her work takes shape through the exploration of the printing, artist’s book, and sculptural art forms. She is the recipient of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec–Artist of the Year, Laval 2021 award and also earned two research-creation grants for her work from the CALQ-Entente territorial Laval (2018, 2019). Her oeuvre has been exhibited in Quebec (Montreal, Laval, Trois-Rivières, Longueuil, Boucherville, Matane), Switzerland, and Spain.
Photo credit: René Gravel
Kjellaug Hatlen Lunde
Photo credit: Kjellaug Hatlen Lunde
Kjellaug Hatlen Lunde was born in 1963 and lives and works in the Lofoten Islands, Norway. She is a print artist, in 2019 she founded the print studio KK-trykk at Kunstkvarteret Lofoten. The artist is instigator and coordinator of the collective printmaking project Trykk i sanntid bringing together printmaking studios on the Norwegian coast. She has participated in several national and international projects and exhibitions.
Tegson
Tegson is a Scandinavian based artist working in the public space. With roots in Bergens early 2000s graffiti environment, he has through the years developed an unique urban expression.You can follow his trail of colors around the world from Queens, NY to Shanghai.
Photo credit: Tegson
Silvia Eliana Martinez
Photo credit: Silvia Eliana Martinez
Silvia Eliana Martinez is an artist born in Argentina, she is a Canadian and Norwegian citizen who lived and studied in Canada from 1973 to 2001. Now established in Tromsø since 2003, she keeps her foot on the ground in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighborhood in Montreal. As an immigrant woman artist, she questions the connection between identity, art and territory. Her work is based on the characteristics of distinct cultural systems. She is also the founder of the print studio Prima Ink, as coordinator, she participated in Tromsø Open (2011-2012). Her work has been exhibited in Norway, Canada, Chile and France.
L’imprimerie thanks the Canada Council for the Arts for its support.
The team and artists thank Les Offices jeunesse internationaux du Québec for their support.
The artists Caroline Ariane Bergeron, Marie-Claude Gendron and Jocelyne Thibault thank the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec for its support.
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