Public Art as Social Practice: Developing Your Artistic Point of View

In March, we are hosting a workshop that looks at trends in contemporary public art. Megan Kammerer will offer The Bentway as a case study to explore how public art is evolving in Canada, illustrating how creative interventions can shape the ways people move, gather, and connect in shared spaces.

With this workshop, we are pleased to welcome Dani Crosby to lead a local conversation about public art in Oshawa and Durham Region. She’ll begin by sharing her own experiences, offering valuable insight gleaned through trial and error and by aligning her values with her artistic practice. Then, through a series of facilitated exercises, artists will be invited to define their own points of view and generate ideas for bringing creativity and connection to public spaces.

The intention with this workshop is to create a supportive opportunity for local artists to develop ideas together and to form or strengthen professional bonds. It is designed for anyone who is curious about bringing their artwork into public spaces and those seeking inspiration or motivation to get started.

This event is free and will be held in-person at the gallery. Please register to attend. If there is anything we can do to support your participation, please reach out to Hannah at [email protected].

Dani Crosby is an artist, community-engaged project builder, and arts educator with over 15 years of experience working across illustration, studio art, and public art. Dani’s creative process is rooted in play, exploration, and curiosity, and her work often explores themes of identity, place, illusion, nature, and connection.

Since 2011, Dani has taught part-time at Durham College in the Faculty of Media, Art & Design, where she has built strong relationships with community partners to expand experiential learning opportunities through collaborative service learning projects. Her practice is deeply grounded in community engagement and collaboration, with a focus on creating work that responds to the social and environmental contexts of the region.

1. Dani Crosby, digital drawing for Turning The Wheel Mural (detail), 2024, McMillan Parkade, 110 King St W, Oshawa.
2. Dani Crosby, SUSO Skate Banner, 2024, 419 King St W, Oshawa.
3. Dani Crosby, Turning The Wheel Mural, 202 McMillan Parkade, 110 King St W, Oshawa.

The Artist Professional Development Workshop series is generously sponsored by the RBC Foundation.

The Oshawa Art Association’s 58th Juried Art Exhibition: Opening Reception and Awards Presentation

Join us from 6-9pm for the opening reception of the Oshawa Art Association’s 58^th Juried Art Exhibition. Awards to be presented at 7pm.

This event is free and open to everyone. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Hannah at [email protected].

Durham District School Board: For Art’s Sake Exhibition Opening

Come together to celebrate student art in Durham Region!

The RMG invites you to attend the opening reception our bi-annual Durham District School Board Exhibition: For Art’s Sake. Showcasing artworks from nearly every high school in the region, this event recognizes our local budding young artists.

This event is free and open to everyone. For information on our facilities, please click here. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Leila at [email protected].

Presented in partnership with

Spring Seniors Social

Back by popular demand! This free event encourages seniors (age 55+) to spend the afternoon curating their own program. We will offer refreshments, tours and drop-in art making sessions. It’s a fun, low-pressure way to try something new, meet fellow seniors, and celebrate creativity.

Schedule of events, details below:

1- 3:30pm – Refreshments in Arthur’s
1 – 3:30pm – Drop-in printmaking workshop
1pm – Guided tour of the RMG’s current exhibitions starting in the lobby
1:30 – 2:30pm -Step by step drawing workshop with Jade Wysotski in the lookout

1:30-2:30pm │The Lookout │1st Floor

Soft Pastel Pears
Guest Instructor: Jade Wysotski
Look forward to bringing this colourful pair of pears to life using soft pastels and a variety of blending techniques. We will focus on how to express form through colour and direction.

Enjoy creating a work of art suitable for all drawing abilities. All materials provided!

1 – 3:30pm │Studio │1st Floor

Make an Impression This Spring
Celebrate the season with an engaging and creative afternoon of printmaking. This drop-in session invites you to explore a simple, rewarding printmaking process using printing foam, ink, and paper.

All supplies are provided, and no prior art experience is necessary.

1pm │ Lobby │Main Floor

Meet us in the lobby for an exploratory exhibition tour. View historical Canadian artworks that are protected and selected from our Permanent Collection as well as special exhibitions, featuring diverse artworks by Canadian artists.

1 – 3pm │ Arthurs │4th Floor

Join us in our charismatically renovated event space, featuring fresh spring views from above Oshawa. We are serving free, light refreshments including hot tea, coffee and small bites. Perfect to warm up and socialize with new and familiar friends!

Receive 10% off on regular priced items in our gift shop. Not including books or member pricing, in store only.

Seniors Programming has been made possible thanks to the generous support of Sienna for Seniors Foundation.

Seniors Art Competition and Exhibition: Info Session & Exhibition Tour 2026

Calling all senior artists! We invite you to take part in this two-part event at the RMG, which begins with an overview of the Seniors Art Competition and Exhibition, including competition categories and judging criteria, and concludes with an optional tour of some of our current exhibitions.

Come get your questions answered! Please register for this free event here.

The Seniors Art Competition and Exhibition is a showcase of creativity and technical skill among members of the Oshawa Senior Community Centres, Oshawa Public Libraries, and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Featuring paintings, drawings, sculpture, and more, this annual community exhibition is structured around a competition theme. This year, the theme is “That Summer”.

Local residents who are 55+ and a member of the RMG, Oshawa Senior Community Centres, or the Oshawa Public Libraries, are invited to submit one artwork for the exhibition. The exhibition runs from August 14 – September 24, 2026, and artwork drop off and registration will take place on Tuesday, August 11 from 10 am-4 pm. More information is available in the program brochure.

The Seniors Art Competition and Exhibition is co-hosted by The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa Senior Community Centres, and the Oshawa Public Libraries. Seniors programming has been made possible thanks to the generous support of Sienna for Seniors Foundation.

This event is free and accessible, if there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Hannah at [email protected]

In Conversation: Scott Rogers and Cole Swanson

In the first of two events featuring artists Scott Rogers and Cole Swanson, this talk invites the artists to respond to the installation Mutualism (Fixed Assets) on view at the RMG until April 12, 2026. Building on Rogers’ interest in human-built infrastructures for the care and support of non-human beings, this work takes the form of a site-responsive bird feeding station. Assembled from broken automobile parts scavenged from roads and highways, Mutualism (Fixed Assets) connects with the industrial history of Oshawa, while proposing possibilities of ecological renewal out of the wreckage. Drawing on the resonance between their respective practices, Rogers and Swanson will explore a range of questions and reflections brought forward by this installation.

Let us know you’re coming!

We are pleased to present this artist talk in partnership with the Art Gallery of Peterborough (AGP). Cole Swanson’s solo exhibition, Lithic Life, will be on view at the AGP until March 29, 2026. On March 7, the artists will travel to the Art Gallery of Peterborough to reflect on and respond to Swanson’s work in an artist-led exploration of his exhibition. Visit the AGP website for more info.

Scott Rogers was born in Mohkinstsis Calgary Treaty 7 and lives in Tkaronto, Canada. His practice negotiates the complex relationships between humans, other living beings, and land. Notable recent projects include Ormston House (Limerick, IR), ATLAS Arts (Skye, SCO), Pink Snow (Berlin, DE), Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Koraï Project Space (Nicosia, CY), Kunstverein München (DE), Ivory Tars (Glasgow, SCO), Kamias Triennial (Manila, PH), and Franz Kaka (Toronto). In 2017 Rogers co-edited “Recognition”, the 14th issue of the journal FR DAVID, in collaboration with Will Holder and published by KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin, DE). Scott’s audio installation Songs to the Sun was recently acquired for the Circulating Public Art Collection of Markham (CA). In 2025 he organised Affinities, an exhibition with two seven two gallery (Toronto), and presented Between Leaf & Light, a new site-specific sound installation for the Cancer Program at Barrie Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre.

Cole Swanson is an artist and educator based in Toronto/Tkaronto. Through an interdisciplinary and materially focused practice, he explores emerging relationships between species living together in a time of environmental crisis. Exhibiting at institutions across Canada and abroad, Swanson often engages with conservationists, scientists, and community partners to integrate advocacy, education, and access into the creative process. Swanson is a PhD candidate in Environmental Studies at York University. For his research on Toronto’s double-crested cormorants, he was awarded a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship — the nation’s highest doctoral research prize. His work has been supported by private and public agencies including the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. He is a faculty member in the visual arts programs at Humber Polytechnic (Toronto).

Presented in partnership with the Art Gallery of Peterborough.

The Neighbour’s Art Hive Artists Activation

Join us for artmaking and community connection in The Neighbour’s Art Hive!

Each session is led by a passionate and talented local artist-educator who will guide creative exploration while fostering a warm, inclusive, and welcoming space for all participants. All experience levels are welcome.

Sessions are hosted from 11am–2pm in Gallery A.

Sessions
🟆 Saturday, January 17, 2026: Collage & Zines with Hayde Esmailzadeh

🟆 Saturday, January 24, 2026: Expressive Arts: Exploring Paper Sculpture Techniques with Carol Knowlton-Dority

🟆 Saturday, January 31, 2026: Storytelling Drawing: Comic/Zine with Anoosh Mubashar

🟆 Saturday, February 7, 2026: Collage & Zines with Ruckus Art Collective

🟆 Saturday, February 14, 2026: Learn How to Bead on Fabric with Leequette Santiago-Hinds

🟆 Sunday, February 15, 2026: Acrylic Pour Painting with Melissa Dipchand

What to expect:

These drop-in events are free.
You’re welcome to come and go as you please.
Engagement is flexible. Participants may take part in the artist-educator’s activity or engage independently within the Hive.
Everyone is welcome; no art experience required.
Participants are welcome to take their projects with them or hang them up for everyone to enjoy!

The Neighbour’s Project, installed at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (February 2024).

The RMG is located at 72 Queen Street, Civic Centre in Oshawa, across from the McLaughlin Branch of the Oshawa Public Libraries. The Neighbour’s Art Hive is in Gallery A, which is located on the lower level of the RMG. It is accessible by stairs or elevator. Between the elevator and Gallery A, you’ll pass our public washrooms. We have an accessible single-stall washroom as well as gender-inclusive multi-stall washrooms. Read more about our facilities here.

What is an art hive?

Art Hives are safe, accessible spaces that enable people of all ages to participate in free public relaxation. In an Art Hive, traditional hierarchies, processes, and ways of being can be deconstructed and re-imagined in playful, personal, and compassionate ways.

The Neighbour’s Art Hive is a temporary installation at the RMG that transforms the gallery into an active studio space with help from the LivingRoom Community Art Studio. Outside of these facilitated sessions, we also invite all our neighbours to drop in any time during operating hours to make use of the free art materials on their own time.

January 17
Collage & Zines with Hayde Esmailzadeh

Join us for a creative and collaborative day of collage and zine-making. We’ll dive into zine-making and use drawing, writing, and collage to create your own self-published piece to share beyond the workshop. In addition, you will have the option to contribute to a collective group zine that will be kept at the Art Hive. All materials included. No experience necessary.

Hayde Esmailzadeh, also known as Zadeh, is a ceramicist, sculptor, and mixed-media creator. She is the editor-in-chief and co-creator of Zene Magazine, an independent publication focused on self-publishing and platforming emerging and underrepresented voices in contemporary art and culture. With a background rooted in hands-on making and storytelling, Hayde’s work focuses primarily on material exploration and community-driven publishing.

January 24
Expressive Arts: Exploring Paper Sculpture Techniques with Carol Knowlton-Dority

Participants are encouraged to explore their own voice as they experiment with a wide variety of paper sculpture techniques. Through guided discovery and problem solving challenges participants can discover many ways to cut/tear, curl, roll, fringe, fold, pleat and attach paper.

Participants are welcome to explore the techniques and materials as they choose, or they may make a piece of artwork in response to prompts such as: create an expressive face, an alien or a magical garden.

Carol Knowlton-Dority is a Toronto-based visual artist whose work explores the evolving nature of emotional experience. Themes of love, loss, desire, resilience, and hope shape her practice, inviting viewers into a compassionate and reflective encounter with the deep interior life we all share.

In addition to her studio practice, Carol creates Expressive Art experiences for children, adults, multi-generational and special interest groups. She has led workshops for Government of Canada: New Horizons for Seniors, INNoVA: Inclusive Solutions for an Enhanced Workforce, City of Toronto: (Clark Centre for the Arts, Public Health, Shelter, Housing and Support Division, Special Events, Cedar Ridge Creative Centre), Scarborough Arts, Friends of Guild Park and Gardens, University of Toronto, St. John the Divine Convent, Jaya Yoga and throughout the Toronto District School Board.

January 31
Storytelling Drawing: Comic/Zine with Anoosh Mubashar

Learn how to create a mini zine or regular zine for a creative storytelling outlet with a wide variety of materials to fit your artistic expression!

Anoosh is a Toronto-based artist and a recent graduate from OCAD University. She enjoys working in many media, especially painting, printmaking and storytelling. The human mind inspires her and expresses her art through familial stories of nostalgia and growing pains. Her large-scale paintings often draw inspiration from her Pakistani background, particularly through the intricate scarf patterns found in traditional Pakistani scarves, which expose areas of culture that impact identity, relationships, power dynamics, and self-expression. She enjoys incorporating bold, vivid colours into large-scale, multi-panel paintings, featuring delicate images that explore the contradictions found in everyday life.

February 7
Collage & Zines with Ruckus Art Collective

Artists will have the opportunity to explore an array of materials, techniques and themes through the resources of the Art Hive and the skill sharing of their peers. Participants are welcome to work on their solo practice, but are encouraged to contribute their creative vision to a community collage destined to join the artworks living within the Art Hive. Whether you’re a collage fanatic looking for inspiration, a creative curious to explore a new medium, or simply searching for a lively studio to be enveloped in, come buzz with Ruckus at the Art Hive!

Ruckus Art Collective is an Oshawa-based group dedicated to supporting and uplifting the local arts community in Durham Region. Through the hosting of events, exhibitions, and collaborative projects, Ruckus provides a platform for artists to share their work, connect with peers, and engage with the broader public. The collective’s mission is to foster creativity, inclusivity, and dialogue while helping to amplify the voices and talents that define the region’s artistic landscape.

February 14
Learn How to Bead on Fabric with Leequette Santiago-Hinds

Using bead on fabric, participants are invited to explore their own patterns and ideas.

Leequette “Lala” Santiago is an American Canadian visual artist and founder of Santiago Studios. Her work explores her southern identity, spirituality and familial dynamics through a mixture of traditional mediums and textiles.

She uses her craft as a means of storytelling and personal reclamation, especially following her postpartum identity loss. Her process consists of meticulously weaving together mediums, playing with compositions and fiddling with light until she finds something that plays on the viewers senses.

She has been awarded the Emerging Artist Award (2021), The Robert McLaughlin Gallery Award (2023), The Robert McLaughlin Award Gallery (2024) and The Visual Artist Creation Project Grant from the Ontario Arts Council (2025).

Her work has been featured by Pampers, QuickBooks Canada, and in public art across Ontario. She is focused on expanding her exhibition and public art practice.

February 15
Acrylic Pour Painting with Melissa Dipchand

This activity will introduce participants to acrylic pour painting, also known as fluid art, an abstract technique where thinned acrylic paints are poured onto a surface to create dynamic patterns, cells, and marbled effects without traditional brushwork. Accessible to beginners, the process encourages playful experimentation with colour, flow, and movement, resulting in striking and unpredictable outcomes.

Melissa is an experienced arts educator and community-focused facilitator based in Durham Region. Over the past two years, she has served as a Lead Instructor for the Robert McLaughlin Gallery’s March Break programming, where she designs and delivers fun, highly engaging creative experiences for children and families. She also brings more than twelve years of teaching experience through Crayola: IMAGINE Art Academy. Deeply committed to building meaningful community connections, Melissa believes art is a powerful vessel for bringing people of all ages, abilities, and lived experiences together. Her practice centres on creating welcoming, inclusive environments where creativity becomes a shared and connective experience.

In partnership with The LivingRoom Community Art Studio, The Neighbour’s Art Hive is generously supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

Book Launch | Tim Whiten: Elemental

The Joan and Martin Goldfarb Gallery presents

Book Launch of Tim Whiten: Elemental, 2025
Published by the McMaster Museum of Art, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, the Art Gallery of Peterborough, The Goldfarb Gallery, and Art Metropole.

In-person at Olga Korper Gallery
17 Morrow Ave, Toronto, ON M6R 2H9

Artist and curators in attendance

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, along with the McMaster Museum of Art, Goldfarb Gallery, and the Art Gallery of Peterborough, first came together in 2022 and 2023 in presenting a series of four distinct but thematically linked exhibitions of the work of Tim Whiten. These four exhibitions functioned as a retrospective of Whiten’s career, and we are collectively more than pleased to be launching the collaborative publication which marks the closing chapter in this ambitious venture.

Whiten has been a key member of the arts ecology in Toronto for over half a century. He has been dedicated to a sustained inquiry into the human condition through transformative engagements with material and spirit. Whiten has built a practice that defies easy categorization, bridging sculpture, drawing, installation, and performance with a metaphysical lens rooted in ritual, spirituality, and ancestral epistemologies.

The four curators, Pamela Edmonds, Liz Ikiriko, Chiedza Pasipanodya, and Leila Timmins, have collectively written and edited this publication. The catalogue is heavily weighted towards documenting Whiten’s work, with the essays touching on the elemental cores of his practice and of the curator’s individual understandings of this practice as gained through a full and intimate engagement. The key task of bringing the raw materials to finished form was entrusted to Cristian Ordóñez, whose deft work has resulted in a book that entices and encourages the reader to sense fully Whiten’s trajectory.

For more information on this event and media inquiries in general please contact [email protected]

Opening Celebration: Haley Uyeda and Natural Curiosities

Help us celebrate the opening of Haley Uyeda’s solo exhibition featuring new works from the artist’s residency at the gallery!

We’re also celebrating a recently opened exhibition of floral and botanical art from the RMG’s permanent collection. Check out Natural Curiosities on Level 3!

Artists and curators in attendance. Remarks begin at 1:30, followed by an artist talk with Haley Uyeda.

This event is free and open to everyone. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Hannah at [email protected].

In Conversation with Ekow Nimako

Join us for an exciting conversation between exhibiting artist Ekow Nimako and local writer, educator, and researcher, Ashley Marshall. Together, Ekow and Ashley will discuss how the exhibition Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships re-imagines ancient African kingdoms through an Afrofuturist lens. Digging into histories of the African diaspora and envisioning abundant Black futures, this conversation will shed light on Ekow’s artistic practice and the inspiration and imagination that produced the exhibition.

This event is free and open to everyone. Seating will be provided for all guests.

Read more about the exhibition, Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships, here.

For more information on our facilities, please click here. If you have questions about the event or other requests, please email Hannah at [email protected].

Ekow Nimako, Wawa Aba, The Sunrise Dancer (circa 1358), 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

Ekow Nimako is a Toronto-based, internationally exhibiting LEGO artist who crafts futuristic and whimsical sculptures from the iconic medium. Rooted in his childhood hobby and intrinsic creativity, Nimako’s formal arts education and background as a lifelong multidisciplinary artist inform his process and signature aesthetic. His fluid building style, coupled with the Afrofuturistic themes of his work, beautifully transcend the geometric medium to embody organic and fantastical silhouettes.

Ashley Marshall is a Durham-based writer, educator, and researcher. Their research critiques how power, economics, and politics influence social change, while advocating for imagination and creativity as alternatives to neoliberal market logics. Her work aims to use collaborative measures to dissect and render visible the various social and material flows that (re)produce hegemonic power structures and dismantle them. Marshall reviews art for Rungh Magazine, is a former Board member of The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and is an advocate for the arts. With a penchant for Black surrealism, fabulism, the speculative, and foodie fiction, Marshall’s work is interested in what we can learn from nature to think towards humane frameworks.

Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships is organized and circulated by Dunlop Art Gallery.