Jane Kidd – Ten Years

This ten-year survey exhibition curated by Richard Gordon, Assistant Curator of the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, will be the largest, most comprehensive survey of Jane Kidd's woven tapestries to date.  

While Jane Kidd's art studies provided a thorough training in painting and modernist aesthetics, early in her career she began to investigate non-western art traditions. Her exposure to indigenous textile practices through extensive travel in Mexico, South America, Africa and Asia convinced her to choose woven tapestry as a medium. To quote the artist: 

“For the majority of my art-making career I have chosen to work with the process of woven tapestry. The multi-cultural and ritually charged traditions of this narrative textile media provides an appropriate vehicle to express both my actual and spiritual experiences. The process of woven tapestry also allows me to indulge my inclination towards intricate detail, rich colour and sensuous surfaces.” 

There will be a major publication organized for this exhibition, for which Amy Gogarty, a Calgary painter, writer and art historian and Susan Warner Keene, a Toronto textile artist, writer and past Senior Associate Editor of Ontario Craft Magazine will provide the main body of critical writing. The recognition and excitement generated by the work of Jane Kidd will not only contribute to the exhibition program of the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, but will also enhance the significance of local textile artists. This exhibition is in keeping with the Illingworth Kerr Gallery's commitment to showcasing the work of regional artists.  

Jane Kidd has worked professionally in Calgary for over thirteen years and has been exhibiting both nationally and internationally since the early seventies. Her work is represented in major institutional, corporate and private collections in Canada and the United States.