Veronica Verkley Bio
Veronica Verkley (she, her) is a sculptor and media artist. Her work is focused on animal forms and gestures, and shifts between kinetics, installation, and animation. Parallel to her practice, Veronica has collaborated extensively in film, theatre and dance, with a focus on puppeteering and animatronics. She has recently returned to her practice full time, after 10 years as full-time founding faculty at the Yukon School of Visual Arts, Dawson City Yukon.
Recent exhibitions include Olga Korper (Toronto), and the Esker Foundation Project Space (Calgary); along with McMaster (Hamilton), Ottawa Art Gallery, OK Quoi? (New Brunswick), and Video Pool (Winnipeg) among others. Her work has been screened in Canada, Norway, Australia, USA and Japan. She was one of 6 artists shortlisted for the inaugural Yukon Prize for Visual Arts.
Veronica Verkley Artist Statement
My practice is centered around the gestures of animals, and their resilience in navigating human habitats. I work in installation, animation and kinetics, scavenging for available materials: metal, rubber, plastic, textiles. I’m drawn to the aesthetics of industrial and cultural cast-offs foraged from the local landscape, worn, weathered and with their own secret histories, reformed into soft animal bodies. When I lived in the city I searched ravines and scrap metal yards; in the bush it was the landfill and mining camps; so the work is a reflection of my surroundings. Organic, flexible forms are assembled by hand: weaving, wrapping and stitching the way animals or birds would construct a nest or dam. Movement is implied through pose or multiples; or actualized, with pumps or motors.
I’ve lived off grid since 2007. I experience living in the bush as a kind of observational practice that informs my art practice. There are always chores: collecting snow for drinking, wood for heating & cooking, picking berries, fixing things. Mainly though, I spend a lot of time just observing small goings-on around me.
Nature is endlessly narrating stories — we just have to be still long enough to read them. Its the stuff I attempt to bring into my formal practice: a translation of what it means to be here.