Donna Akrey

I am interested in how we build our environments, intentionally or by default. I try to use humour as a way to present problematic issues by drawing the viewer in while also using a playful handmade aesthetic that people seem to relate to. This method of disarming the viewer allows me to touch on serious issues and ask questions; imagining the absurd as real, because sometimes the real is so absurd.

Many of my exhibitions have been performance installations that are a direct response to a particular community. In the installation Palindrome (2000) materials found during the July 1st moving weekend in Montreal were used to create a huge coliseum like structure out of discarded furniture inside a space while wooden pallets found on the street, were reassigned as furniture and left in situ. In another performative installation, HAVENWOODPOINTEGREENTERRACE-INC (2003) at Truck Gallery in Calgary, I utilized scrap materials from the building sites of the rapidly growing suburbs surrounding the city core. Small houses were then mass-produced with these materials. SHOWROOM which was last exhibited at AKA Gallery in Saskatoon (2007) invited visitors to donate objects or materials into a 6’x6’ cube where I would make composite sculptural objects to be then installed in an otherwise empty gallery space.

I believe knowledge is relative and fallible rather than absolute and certain and I endeavour to discover the richness in between intention and result. Utilizing common, surplus and discarded materials such as foam, concrete, found objects, junk mail, wood, rubber and household products etc., I create both large installations and sculptural objects. I think of some of my sculptures and installations as gigantic understatements, ruminations on the spectacle of the unspectacular.