• PUBLISHED on January 03, 2010

Perusing Peanut Brittle’s room Exhibition essay by Cindy Baker I had hardly met Lex Vaughn before she came to AKA; we had shared the three briefest of head-nods in passing three times over the past three years. While volunteering in the gallery, however, helping her source out supplies for the installation, and installing the show […]

• PUBLISHED on October 20, 2009

Began in 2007, the project calls on architects and artists to conceive nomadic dwellings for itinerants. The shelters had to be designed for one person, with materials that were easily found in Canada, inexpensive, and recyclable if possible. They also had to be reusable and easy to set up by one person alone.

• PUBLISHED on October 19, 2009

 The Nomadic Dwellings project, an intriguing example of socially engaged art, addresses a homeless person’s need for impermanent shelter by actively recruiting architects into a visual arts space to engage in original creation. It is the inspiration of Folie/Culture (roughly translated, Madness/Culture), an organization based in Quebec City with a mandate to encourage reflection on […]

• PUBLISHED on September 02, 2009

Steve Debruyn SKATER DYI September 18th to October 17th, 2009 Steven deBruyn uses recycled materials, scraps of wood and bits of city detritus to build skate ramps that locate themselves between form and function. His DIY attitude and punk aesthetic render his works transient and as dispensable as the materials they are built from. Often, […]

• PUBLISHED on July 28, 2009

The Metal Drummer and the Walldog is part of a series of works that focus on broadly expanding ideas of performance. The project is inspired by bulletin boards at music stores and rehearsal studios traditionally used as communication hubs where musicians can post their search for bands and bands for new members. The posts found at these public sites are a nominal portraiture, wherein an ideal band or band member is described in a few lines, some musical references, or – more and more often – a myspace address. For The Metal Drummer and the Walldog the artists have chosen a recent post by drummer Lexie Miller from a public bulletin site in Saskatoon and re-designed it to fit AKA’s public Billboard where it has been carefully hand-painted by local sign-painter Dave Smith.

• PUBLISHED on July 27, 2009

Rock n’ Roll Ethics as Style Dagmara Genda Since their 2007 Berlin residency, Canadian art power couple Hadley + Maxwell, have dealt with the aesthetics of music—most specifically rock n’ roll. Their Berlin project, 1+1-1, was a multi-media installation examining the ethics and aesthetics of rock rehearsal through a re-presentation of Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for […]

• PUBLISHED on June 27, 2009

Then + Then Again – Practices within an artist run culture, 1969 – 2006  Clive Robertson June 26th to July 31st, 2009 Then + Then Again – Practices within an artist run culture, 1969 – 2006 is an archival retrospective exhibition curated by media artist and artist-run centre pioneer and theorist, Clive Robertson. The show […]

• PUBLISHED on May 22, 2009

Brain Child consists of over 100 figurines of rosy-cheeked, round-eyed girls wearing oversized bonnets. Together the ceramic figures queue up before a giant macramé brain perched on a fiberglass pillar. Described as “femme-savants,” the cuteness of the figures is subverted by their near cultish formations around the hovering brain. Feminine sweetness and naïveté is exists side by side with superhuman cranial capacity.

• PUBLISHED on April 10, 2009

Boom Town  Colin Lyons April 10th to May 8th, 2009 Colin Lyons‘ Boomtown depicts out of use industrial buildings along the Lachine Canal in Montreal. These buildings, once active centres of production, now range from serving as artist studios to empty relics. Lyons uses etched zinc plates to print images of industrial buildings that he […]

• PUBLISHED on March 01, 2009

“What are you going to do with that?” Nearly everyone who has made the decision to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree has fielded such a question, often couched in a tone of deep concern, from friends, family and well-wishers alike. With a dearth of “real world” job positions for artists per se, is a BFA education more of a liability than an asset? What prospects face BFA students after graduation? With these questions in mind, this exhibition, featuring a selection of current BFA students from both the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Regina.