Jill Price

Working at the intersection of art, ethics and ecology, Jill Price is an interdisciplinary artist, professional educator, independent curator and published writer of German, Scottish, Welsh and unknown descent. Grateful to be living, working and playing on the traditional territory of the Wendat Nation and Anishinaabeg people, which include the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Pottawatomi Nations, collectively known as the Three Fires Confederacy, Price is a SSHRC PhD Research Fellow in Cultural Studies at Queen's University where she has been exploring UN/making as a creative act.

Inspired by the vitalist materialism writing of Jane Bennett, the article Scholarship as Engagement by Richard Falk, and creatives who respect the liveliness and agency of the more-than-human, this Research Creation Phd acknowledges how “all art is land art” as it is from the bodies of the earth all materials come, and to soil, air and water all materials eventually return. Culminating from a series of durational performances that began in the fall of 2022, Price has taken up different acts of UN/making to ensure her thesis and creative praxis can go back to the land in a good way.

Aligning Programs

UN/MAKING LOSS: Collecting for the Commons
October 2022
Learning how the majority of seeds are lost to the wind, wildlife, as well as other more-than-human or human interferences, Jill Price used last fall to collect seeds for the creation of seed paper upon which to write her PhD thesis.

UN/MAKING CONCRETE: Composting for the Commons
October 18, 2022
Jill Price held a day of community composting in UG's Gallery Garden to create rich and lively soil in preparation for the planting of her thesis and the gallery's inaugural artist intervention.

UN/MAKING THE UNNEEDED: Preparing for the New
November 15, 2022
Examining how artists can still create while resisting the further extraction of resources, Jill Price carefully deconstructed a large paper sculpture and other works on paper from her MFA exhibition Land as Archive in preparation for the creation of seed paper for the writing of her thesis.

UN/MAKING PERFECTION: Reusing Waste over Purity and Perfection of Editions
January 2023
Working with the Paperhouse Studio in Toronto, Jill Price reconnected with the messiness, back breaking work, and craft of beating and hand-pulling paper for the creation of over 300 sheets of seed paper. Seeds included are: Yellow Cone flowers from Price's garden, Blue Cornflowers, Black Eyed Susans, Yarrow, Snap dragons, Snow flowers, Milkweed, Poppies, Gilia Birds Eyes, Purple Creeping Thyme, and Chamomile.

UN/MAKING SPEED: Handwriting as Creative Practice, Reflexivity, and Embodiment
May 2, 2023
During this performance, Jill Price embraced the idea that accelerated technologies, such as computers, hinder our ability to absorb, synthesize and retain information. Handwriting the second draft of her thesis on seed paper, Price found it required her to slow down in processing information and therefore reactivated her brain to further comprehend, connect and clarify concepts within her thesis.

UN/MAKING THEORY: Planting as Performativity and Repair
May 16, 2023
Putting concepts of her thesis into action, Jill Price worked with the community to plant a draft of her PhD paper on seed paper into Union Gallery’s new garden. Be sure to revisit the site throughout the summer and fall to witness how colonial aesthetics and human language are UN/made through the growing and evolving expressions of a pollinator garden.


This series is supported in part by funding from the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and Queen's University.