Donna Akrey, Collin Johanson, Simon McNally, Erica Stocking
IN EXCESS
February 19 – March 26. 2005
Artist Talks – Saturday., March.12, 2pm
An EXHIBITION PUBLICATION is available at the Gallery. Transcribed Conversations available here.
Erica Stocking
Simon McNally
Collin Johanson
Donna Akrey
Accumulation and abundance no longer transparently signify security, autonomy or strength. How do we negotiate the complex relationships between impoverishment and excess surrounding us today? The Helen Pitt Gallery ARC is pleased to present In Excess, an exhibition of work by four emerging artists involved with related investigations in their everyday lives.
The global political economy has reconfigured any comprehension of what used to be called progress. The works in this exhibition engage with this shared culture of consumption and many of its attributes — distraction, disposability, nostalgia, simulation, debt, historical amnesia, abjection, obsolescence and deregulation. Can as yet unimagined, collectively beneficial and sustainable models of cultural, economic and technological development be constituted? How can such questions be approached without returning to utopic ideological tropes and their inherent contradictions, violence and historical failure?
The diverse range of practices represented in In Excess share a critical awareness of these conditions and questions. Rather than making claims concerning answers, this exhibition provides viewers with the opportunity to imagine the possible and experience the hopefully rejuvenating effects of critical distance and contemplation. Donna Akrey, Collin Johanson, Simon McNally and Erica Stocking reconsider aspects of the worlds of excess we inherit and how they are changing. They also reflect on how we choose to live with them.
Erica Stocking was born in Toronto, Ontario, and now lives and works in Vancouver, BC. She holds a B.F.A. from the Emily Carr Institute. Her work explores the middle ground through various material translations.
Simon McNally completed his BFA and BA in Art History at NSCAD in 2002. He is presently in the first year of his Master’s degree in Art History at UBC. Simon continues his studio practice while he pursues academic studies. His studio is in East Vancouver.
Collin Johanson recently received a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute. Drawing has always been the impetus for many of his photographic and sculptural projects. His work often investigates compromised aesthetics relating to function and accessibility. Attracted to chimerical relationships, he creates characters and surroundings that are playful expressions of dramatically exaggerated abjection, psychosis, morality and persona. Raised in Parksville, Vancouver Island, Collin also spent two years studying visual arts at Mallaspina College. He is currently involved in the Vancouver Art Gang collective planning to publish a quarterly contemporary art magazine called U.E.
Donna Akrey lives and works in Calgary Alberta. Her work reflects her interest in the urban environment, language and communication, body and mind, and the power of the habitual within our dreams and realities. She uses an interdisciplinary approach to articulate ideas, creating large installations and sculptural objects, single channel video, video installation and book works. Utilizing common, surplus and discarded materials such as foam, concrete, found objects, junk mail, wood, rubber and household products etc., she considers some of her works to be gigantic understatements — ruminations on the spectacle of the unspectacular.
