Linda Duvall and Jillian McDonald: Messages from the Rocks - Stories of the Invisible

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Photo credit: Royal Saskatchewan Museum, Regina Urban Wildlife Project

Linda Duvall and Jillian McDonald: Messages from the Rocks - Stories of the Invisible 

Artists Linda Duvall (Saskatoon) and Jillian McDonald (Brooklyn, New York) will spend three weeks co-creating their exhibition Messages from the Rocks - Stories of the Invisible at the Art Gallery of Regina with the public, beginning on May 23. 

Funded by a grant from Sk-arts Artists In Communities program, Messages from the Rocks - Stories of the Invisible is both a community-engaged project and a creation residency. Duvall and McDonald's activities include events, artworks in the public realm and transforming the art gallery into a laboratory for participatory art-making. Their expansive project includes:

An exhibition co-created with gallery visitors;

Posters and flags;

Nature walks;

An electronics workshop;

A field guide co-authored with school children, senior citizens and other members of the public.

Duvall and McDonald spent two years connecting with the Land and the people of Regina. Travel restrictions meant that in June 2021, the artists met with vertebrate biologists, provincial building project managers, archeologists, Indigenous Knowledge Keepers and geologists over online video conferences, followed by a one-week residency at the Art Gallery of Regina in August 2021. A key concept for their project emerged from the artists' visit to Regina: listening to the Land and the forces that animate it.

Messages from the Rocks - Stories of the Invisible extends beyond the gallery and expands notions of what Art is. The artists propose Art as a transformative research model that values participation, creation, experience, and the unexplained.

Duvall and McDonald will turn the Art Gallery of Regina into a laboratory for experimentation and co-creation of the exhibition with the public from June 2 to July 31. Pictures, stories, and artifacts contributed by community members all form part of the completed exhibition alongside artworks, such as a two-channel video of the artists' connection across distances through the shared act of digging in their rural (Duvall) and urban (McDonald) backyards and delicately foreboding drawings of holes.