Unexpected Encounter.
October - November 2002

Curated by Gail Bourgeois, Unexpected Encounter is an exhibition which features six core artists: Micheline Durocher (inkjet prints), Christina Horeau (drawings and wall sculpture), Cyndra MacDowall (photographs), Marie-Christine Simard (photographs), and a work by artist\curator Gail Bourgeois. The exhibition presents art making as a dynamical motion. Bourgeouis's intent is to "foreground the creative process as it calms the jammed space (brouillage) of a disrupted relationship to the world, and to forward the dynamical impulse generated from disequilibrium. The diversity of voices in this project presents a shape of wholeness and gives value to a nesting instinct that displaces melancholia and nostalgia." To do this, for every city this exhibition travels to it picks up a local artist. In Saskatoon, that artist was Monika Napier (sculpture/installation).

Women's Art Resource Centre, Toronto (June - July 2002)
Ace Art, Winnipeg (September - October 2002)
AKA, Saskatoon (October - November 2002)
Richmond Art Gallery, Vancouver (mid-January 2003)

Glimpses and Glitches.
September - October 2002

Emerging Saskatoon artists from University of Saskatchewan. Linda Duvallís Summer Session class shows at AKA. Video works by Loretta Getuiza, Brody Doyle, Simon Bird, Robert Nesdole, Yasuyo Itoh, Andrie Fehereghazi, Brad Milne, Jake Gossen, Danielle Newman, Becky May, Cali Boyle, Donna Shokeir, Jon Busch, Kari McRea, Sarah Joy E. Kallos, Cali Boyle, Janet Jones, Crystal Russell, Isabel da Silva and Ray Lodoen.

John Boehme, Mein Fore

John Boehme, Dink Out

Performance Anxiety 4
Paradigms of Leisure: John Boehme.
May - June 2002

Boehme's work, as presented at AKA Gallery, consisted of two interdisciplinary performances -- Mien Fore, and On Leisure -- with sculptural installation as archive. Boehme also performed an offsite project, Dink Out.

From teeing golf balls off at aluminum-sheathed gallery walls, to preparing the gallery floor with surf wax, to manicuring astroturf with a weedwhacker, Boehme attempted, through his actions, to get to the heart of contemporary western society's cult of recreation. Through materiality and sculptural archive his artwork also referenced and questioned Post-painterly abstraction, actionism and fluxus art practice.

Pippa Cherniavsky, Installation view

Daniel Erban, Installation view

Roland Daum, Installation view

Drawing Flesh: Roland Daum, Pippa Cherniavsky, Daniel Erban.
April - May 2002

Drawing Flesh was an exhibition of three artists from across Canada who all use the human form as a starting point for their drawings. The works in this show were truly graphic; these artists know how to exploit their media to elicit an emotional response in the viewer. Spare on colour but big on style, Drawing Flesh was very evocative work.

Jeoffery Thomas, Where Are you From?

Colleen Cutshall, Installation view


Colleen Cutshall, Installation view

(E)merge.
January - February 2002

In January and February 2002, AKA, The Photographer's Gallery and Video Verite's programming converged to put emerging artists and curators in the spotlight. AKA presented New Geographers, the culmination of an emerging curators project, while TPG and Video Verite presented Equilateral, a curatorial initiative featuring emerging Saskatoon artists. As a component of the project, Equilateral and New Geographers traveled to artist-run centres in Edmonton; early in 2002, Harcourt House Arts Centre and Latitude 53 Society of Artists programmed Equilateral and New Geographers, respectively, following their runs in Saskatoon. This provided Edmonton audiences with a similar perspective on emerging art in- and outside of their community, and offered a greater exposure to new communities for the artists and curators involved.

New Geographers.
January - February 2002

This exhibition was the culmination of a project initiated by AKA in the winter of 2001. AKA received a Young Canada Works employment grant in the winter of 2001 to employ an emerging artist or emerging curator from another part of Canada who would organize an exhibition of emerging artists from their own region. New Geographers was the culmination of this incredibly successful project. Emerging curator Isabela Varela from Edmonton organized this exhibition of six Edmonton area artists. With a well-developed curatorial thesis, this exhibition transcended regional boundaries. New Geographers explored popular assumptions and myths about the places we inhabit, be they urban, rural, suburban or less defined hybrid spaces. It was an exhibition about place as concept and lived experience, and as such is an appropriate show to bring together two different emerging art communities. Participating artists included Tanya Camp, Kristina Kudryk, Jonathan Eschak, Jackie Barrett, Tandie McLeod, and Savi Pannu, all from Edmonton

Opening: David Lawson and Claire Greenshaw.
January - February 2002

AKA presented David Lawson and Claire Greenshaw's Opening, an exhibition examining presence and absence of the out-of-town artist in exhibition context, and the role of the reception. New Geographers ran in the main gallery space. It was a show curated by Edmonton artist/curator Isabela Varela with six artists from that region.

Robyn Moody, Public Opinion