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projects

October 2023

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The Great Yes, The Great No
William Kentridge

 

In 2024 in Aix-en-Provence, France, William Kentridge will be presenting a new theatrical production titled The Great Yes, The Great No. The production follows a boat trip from Marseille to Martinique – a small island that was an important site for many well-known figures including Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, André Breton and Josephine Baker. Using the potential of the boat as a metaphor for power, trade and migration, the production will draw on many of the processes and methodologies that have become central to Kentridge’s work.

 

Jillian Ross has been working closely with Kentridge since February 2023 to develop a new print series in response to this stage production. 

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The prints are jungle-like scenes, which began as ink-drawings and collages from one of the many backdrops of The Great Yes, The Great No, and are layered with insightful texts that relate to many of the production’s themes.

William Kentridge, in his studio in Johannesburg, working on a drawing, There Were No Books, that forms part of 

The Great Yes, The Great No. This mixed media artwork was later photographed and made into photogravure plates at the University of Edmonton. These photogravure plates form the basis on which these prints are made.

William Kentridge

There Were No Books,

2023

Paint, Indian Ink, Charcoal,

Coloured Pencil and Collage on paper.

152cm x 178cm

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These print projects, created in collaboration between Ross and Kentridge, involve multiple studios and skilled technicians to develop from beginning to end. This project started at

UCal, Berkeley, moved onto the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada), found its way to JRP in Saskatoon, Canada, Cone Editions in Vermont, and then onto DKW in Johannesburg, South Africa, all the while working with printmakers with the relevant skill sets to help develop the project into being. ​

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These small and large-scale prints, based on imagery of a gardenscape from 

The Great Yes, The Great No are being made from a combination of photogravure and photopolymer plates, combined with chine collé from gampi, dictionary papers, and kitakata papers. The plates will have drypoint and burnishing added in the coming days. 

Publisher                     

Jillian Ross Print, Saskatoon, Canada

David Krut ProjectsJohannesburg, S.Africa

Collaborating Printer 

Jillian Ross

Photogravure              

University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

             Steven Dixon, Luke Johnson

Photopolymer             

Cone Editions, Vermont, USA

             Nathanael Kooperkamp

Editioning and image development

Jillian Ross Print

David Krut Workshop

Editioning printers    

Jillian Ross, Sbongiseni Khulu

Roxy Kaczmarck,

Kim-Lee Loggenberg-Tim,

Sarah Judge and Jesse Shepstone. 

DKW printers, Jillian Ross and William Kentridge working on the large scale print at Kentridges studio at Arts on Main in Johannesburg. 

20 October 2023, Studio walk through of the David Krut Workshop and into the Kentridge Studio. 

more content coming daily.

Workshop 1, January 2023

The Less Good Idea, Season 10,  October 2023

'The Great YES The Great NO takes a historical escape from Vichy France by, among others, the surrealist André Breton, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam, the communist novelist Victor Serge, and the author Anna Seghers, and fictionalizes the journey by adding to the passenger list Aimé Césaire, the Nardal sisters (co-founders with Césaire of the anti-colonial Négritude movement in Paris), the West Indian Marxist philosopher Franz Fanon, Josephine Bonaparte, Josephine Baker, Trotsky, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Stalin.

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The ship is captained by Charon, the ferryman of the dead, and the beating surrealist heart of the work is amplified by the voyage’s conflation with other forced sea crossings, historical and contemporary, and by the dissolution of rational languages, verbal and visual. Kentridge deploys and enhances theatrical elements first developed in his film Oh To Believe in Another World, which was made to accompany a Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, including the use of a system of cardboard cutout masks for the different characters, as well as other signature aspects of his unique stylistic approach to visual storytelling.'          Quaternaire

The Great Yes, The Great No
Theatrical performance workshops in Johannesburg, South Africa. 
 

This project is supported by Creative Saskatchewan's

​Craft and Visual Arts Production Grant Program

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