29.11.2016-09.12.2016 at 12:00-18:00 at Printing Museum’s Balcony Gallery. Opening on 29.11 at 18:00
‘Still Useful’ presents a collection of prints and collages by the Estonian-born Canadian artist Eva Ennist. Eva has spent the month of November in Tartu as an artist in residence, working with different techniques and materials both at the Printing Museum and her studio at Eksperimentaaltootmine in Aparaaditehas. Eva herself describes her project as follows:
“This series of prints and collages is based on the salvaged and repaired work gloves that belonged to my hardworking, frugal and stubborn late mother. These gloves have been lovingly mended and rebuilt numerous times from bits and pieces of less worthy gloves – those that have broken down beyond repair. I find this conscious commitment to keeping any material that might prove itself useful at some point in time to be both inspiring and confounding.
With this exploration of printed textile imagery and digitally printed enlargements of the actual gloves, I am attempting to address the notion of prolonged usefulness and purpose in things, in people and the relationships we have with both.”
Eva has an education in textile design and has participated in several projects and residencies abroad to further her knowledge of textiles and related fields, such as paper making. For a while Eva worked as an assistant professor in her native Toronto OCAD University where she also headed the fibre program. Her residency in Tartu is the first significant involvement with Estonia and also one of her first forays into printmaking.