August 1 – 31
Field Guides are illustrated publications intended to help readers identify wildlife and other natural phenomena. They are practical guidebooks designed to expand our understanding of the world around us. This exhibition appropriates the field guide to provide adaptive strategies for generating painterly images through alternative methodologies, and identify systemic and individual symptoms of burnout through creative attunement.
Field Guide draws on lineages of DIY Zine Culture in queer liberation and disability justice movements to create an access point for visitors to engage with the work and reflect on their own experiences of burnout. Using grids and planes as generative architectures.
Field Guide explores the possibilities of painting beyond its traditional materials and methods to examine how normative structures and systems act as both sites of growth and oppression for disabled people. These rigid, linear infrastructures become a space for abundance and exploration: a fertile space, a trellis for those pushed to the wayside to grow and bloom. Flowers, insects, and weather patterns act as metaphors for the cyclical and organic nature of disabled communities and relationships, mirroring the ways we thrive through mutual care systems. These motifs symbolize natural cycles of decay and growth, highlighting the reciprocities and multiplicities of organic systems around us, positioning ecological relationalities as models of care and sustenance for disabled communities.
Artist Bio
Jude Akrey (they/them) is a white settler, trans, and Autistic artist occupying Between the Lakes Purchase Treaty No.3 territory (Guelph, ON). Working across painting, printmaking, and community-engaged methodologies, their work explore queer/disabled politicization and relationality. Their practice draws from queer liberation and disability justice movements, DIY publication and zines, and lineages in painting to offer a more comprehensive depiction of Autism, neuroqueerness (Nick Walker, PhD), and the dynamics of coping in a neurotypical world. They are committed to investigating the power of empowered communities through shared learning and community-engaged artmaking.
Jude holds a BA (Honours) in Studio Art from the University of Guelph. In 2023, they were selected as the City of Guelph’s 10th Annual Artist-in-Residence, and their project From One Queer to Another received the Warren Garrett Inclusive Programming Award through Ontario Culture Days. They have exhibited at galleries across Ontario, including the Art Gallery of Guelph, Cambridge Art Galleries, Digestif Gallery, RedHead Gallery, and the Guelph Civic Museum. In 2026, they were awarded the inaugural Tom Phillips Prize in Printmaking through the Ontario Arts Foundation. This year, Jude will present solo exhibitions at Sally Wismer Gallery, Access Gallery, 10C, and Cambridge Art Galleries.
Learn more through their Instagram: @judeakrey
