#akimboconnects

Work in Progress by Meaghan Hyckie

In her drawings Meaghan Hyckie deconstructs and visualizes space as a way to reflect on environmental, political and existential ideals and anxieties. Using perspective drawing techniques as the armature in her work provides a structure to investigate the perception of space and the vernacular of drawing. Hyckie aims to access a contradictory tension in drawings that shift from having an aesthetic focus to an unsettling, slightly jarring quality. 

Meaghan Hyckie’s first solo exhibition at Olga Korper Gallery, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Atomic Radiation, opens March 24, 2018, 2-5pm. Exhibition runs March 24 to April 21, 2018.

www.meaghanhyckie.com Instagram: @meaghanhyckie

Works in Progress by Michelle MacKinnon

Working with powdered graphite and pencil on paper, Canadian artist Michelle MacKinnon explores sentiments of home through her recollection of the people who occupy it both currently and previously.

MacKinnon has always been fascinated with family as a defining social structure, as seen in her first solo exhibition Other Self, where she depicted those most influential to her in honest and oversized detail.

In her exhibition, A Rendering of the Once Familiar, MacKinnon reflects on how one can be comforted by the notion of home when its conventional state becomes physically no longer present, how it can endure and evolve within people and objects, and what its existence beyond spatial and temporal boundaries may be. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition at Alison Milne Gallery. 

See Michelle’s work:

A Rendering of the Once Familiar Alison Milne Gallery 134 Osler St. Toronto, ON, M6N 2Y8 On view until November 3, 2018

Find Michelle: Instagram: @michelleleahmackinnon  @alisonmilnegallery

Work in Progress by Bonnie Devine

Bonnie Devine uses various media and mapping strategies to explore the complex colonial histories of the north shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, which include the cities of Mississauga and Toronto and the traditional territories of the Michi Saagiig (Mississauga) and the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations of the Grand River).

Circles and Lines: Michi Saagig aims to honour the relationships between the two original land occupiers and inhabitants; the Mississauga's and the Haudenosaunee: both evicted, sovereign Nations with thousands of years of intellectual knowledge and unwavering protection, and relationship to the land.

Through the combination of a series of scrolls, maps, media, and braided reeds, Circles and Lines: Michi Saagig aims to reconnect and ground us on the traditional territory and land we benefit from, live on, and call home.

See Bonnie’s Work: Bonnie Devine | Circles and Lines: Michi Saagig | Guest-curated by Raven Davis September 6 – December 21, 2018 + Opening Reception and Artist Talk, September 6, 6 – 9 PM Art Gallery of Mississauga 300 City Centre Drive. Mississauga, ON L5B 3C1

Find Bonnie: https://www2.ocadu.ca/bio/bonnie-devine

Find Raven: http://ravendavisart.tumblr.com/ Images:  Titled/Untitled Diptych. Mixed media on board, 2018 48 x 18 inches, 122 x 45.7 cm (total dimensions)

Lands Required to Sustain Diptych. Mixed media on board, 2018 48 x 18 inches, 122 x 45.7 cm (total dimensions)

Work in Progress by Lesley Marshall

SAW Video Commission for The Knot curated by Neven Lockhead, a looped silent commission, which will play on various public screens in Ottawa.  

Lesley is an intermedia artist currently in Ottawa. Lesley has worked as an independent curator (Available Light Screening Collective, Arboretum Festival); promoter, booker, filmmaker, musician, and performance artist under the name LesleyDemon and Lesley 666; instructor and committee member of SAW Video Media Art Centre, Lesley also screams in the band Bonnie Doon. Music videos made by Lesley have been featured on Vice, Exclaim!, Brooklyn Vegan, Aux, Rookie Mag, Stereogum, and UPROXX etc. In 2016, Lesley completed a residency at Artscape Jibralter Point to complete her first 16mm film commission via Windows Collective and in 2017 Lesley was awarded a mentorship grant with the City of Ottawa to study large format intermedia work in Montreal with Nelly-Eve Rajote. For her The Knot Lesley is working with 6 different models and doing a study on the knots of hair as a metaphor of entanglement and daily frustration with beauty. 

Instagram @420sixtynine 

Work in Progress by Rebecca Chaperon

The unusual landscapes painted in Rebecca Chaperon’s Gardens are imagined physical spaces brimming with creative energy. They represent the inner “places” we access for creativity and imagination, places that exist within our larger internal/personal landscape. Chaperon often uses a garden motif inspired by her childhood garden in England - a place of her creative origin, where she learned to create, imagine, and play. These Gardens are living symbols for this perpetual internal place that is the wellspring of creativity and imagination. Finding the “way in” to this often elusive space is sometimes difficult (i.e. creative blocks) so these paintings contain ladders, hidden pathways and waterways with planks for crossing; a number of ways to enter this space. Chaperon’s work often presents a surreal version of the world, places that waver just outside of our perception. This time Chaperon’s exploration of place has led to a gentle introversion - to depict a place that is her creative origin.

Her work will be on view in the exhibition Garden in Toronto until September 30 at Gallery555.ca

www.rebeccachaperon.com

Instagram: @RebeccaChaperon

Work in Progress by Laura Kay Keeling