Helen Christou Gallery
Resource/Resist
Christou Gallery
September 18, 2026 – January 9, 2027

Curator: Katie Marie Bruce
Works from the ULethbridge Art Collection.

The image is never encountered just once. While rooted in the mark making of painting and drawing, prints encounter the same image — fundamentally — over and over.

The attachment to the image is born from working on a matrix, whether copper, zinc, limestone, wood, lino or a permeable surface, and then proofing it — printing it to determine what has been successfully communicated. The artist toils over the matrix and then toils over the printing, and if successful, the image is then printed in multiple, as exactly as possible; duplicated with a sensitivity to pressure, tension, and touch through the printing process. If unsuccessful or in need of further development, that first surface is re-addressed until the matrix produces the imagery the artist set out to make or one that satisfies the intention they set out with. Proofing finds the artist examining each detail and cross-referencing the entire image against their next steps: to change the colour of ink or add another layer, to add tone in one area and lighten in another, to clean up lines by pushing the edges of a metal incision back together. And once those changes are realized, another print is pulled and examined.

The attention required in making prints creates a buffer to everything beyond the plate and the last print. Each choice made is seen every time the plate is printed, and the results of those choices are in each occurrence of the print’s circulation.

The processes of printmaking resist urgency. The drawn-out sense of time found in the studio often expands beyond the presses and processes, becoming a resource of attention that hooks on the imperceptible or the often overlooked. Whether an isolated moment or understanding of a greater ecosystem, each piece in the Resist/Resource exhibition speaks to the resource inhabited by the expanding attention of the printmaker: the liquid curve of a bird’s body; the accidental composition of a smattering of rocks; the transient light at daybreak or through atmospheric fog; the crisp juxtaposition of orange zest and ultra plastic. This is a slow kind of observance that offers an expanse to a singular moment, stretching the initial encounter into something delightfully explorative, multiplied by the medium of print.

Katie Marie Bruce, Guest Curator