VERONICA VERKLEY | GROUND TRUTHING

Outdoor Site-specific Installations
August 18 – September 22, 2006
Dawson City & Whitehorse, Yukon

Presented in partnership with by Yukon Arts Centre Public Art Gallery

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ARTIST STATEMENT  

In this age of Google Earth and remote sensing, “ground truthing”  refers to the practice of map-makers who physically go out on the land to verify for themselves that data gathered is correct.

The installations for Ground Truthing are constructed entirely on site in Dawson and Whitehorse, along the banks of the Yukon River.

Discarded urban and natural materials are foraged from the local  landscape, and the work is assembled by hand, in the same way that animals or birds would construct a nest or dam; working simply with whatever materials are at hand, whether they find themselves navigating the urban forest or  a mountainside.

The work explores the beauty possible in the mundane, the discarded and the overlooked; and explores the natural and cultural geographies and histories of the town sites and surrounding landscape. Over time, the work will be allowed to slowly reabsorb back into the landscape.

BIOGRAPHY

Originally from the wilds of southwestern Ontario, Veronica Verkley is a Toronto-based new media artist, sculptor and filmmaker. Her work combines technology, animals, and scavenging techniques; and ranges from the mechanical to the ethereal. She has shown extensively, including a public art commission in the Don Valley Toronto, a BravoFACT & NFB stop-motion animated short film, and a Canada Council new media research and production project at VideoPool in Winnipeg. She is in the Symbiosis collective, on the board of the Subtle Technologies festival of art and tech, and works in film, dance and theatre doing animatronics, puppeteering, animation & design.

The ODD Gallery wishes to thank our program partners, the Ted Harrison Artist Retreat and the Yukon Arts Centre Public Art Gallery for making this exhibition possible.