Refreshments served. Open to the Public. Registration encouraged.

Join us to learn about the life and art of artist Alexandra Luke. Guest lecturer Margaret Rodgers (artist, curator, writer) is the author of the book Locating Alexandra. Alexandra Luke (i.e. Margaret McLaughlin, 1901-1967) was an important artist linked to the beginnings of abstract painting in Canada and a founding member of Painters Eleven, Ontario’s first abstract painting group (1953-1960). Rodgers will share her knowledge and research about Alexandra Luke to compliment the current exhibition at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Alexandra Luke: Push and Pull, on view until January 14th.

Please join us to celebrate the opening of HEAVY/WATER/MACHINE by RBC Emerging Artist in Residence, Noah Scheinman. Let us know you’re coming with an RSVP.

Gathering with collaborators and researchers, the artist will speak about his relationship to the toxic legacy of Canada’s post-nuclear landscape. The conversation will bring together different perspectives on the interconnected networks of ecosystems and industry that constitute our environment and invite the panelists to respond to some of the questions posed by Noah’s exhibition.

Refreshments will be served following the panel.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

Warren Harper is a curator, researcher and project manager currently based in Toronto, Canada. He has worked with and held various positions at arts organisations and institutions across the UK and in Canada. Currently, Warren is a PhD researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, where he is working on a curatorial research project exploring his home county of Essex’s role in Britain’s nuclear story.

Katie Lawson is a curator and writer based in Toronto. She was a curator for the Toronto Biennial of Art, working with Candice Hopkins and Tairone Bastien on the inaugural 2019 and 2022 editions. She has also curated exhibitions at Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (2024); Images Festival (2023); MacLaren Art Centre (2021); the Art Museum at the University of Toronto (2018); the Art Gallery of Ontario (2018); Y+ Contemporary (2017), and RYMD Reykjavik (2017). Katie is a graduate of the Master of Visual Studies Curatorial program at the University of Toronto, where she previously completed her Master of Arts in Art History. She is currently working towards a PhD in Art and Visual Culture at Western University, with an interest in contemporary art and climate change. Lawson was awarded the Hnatyshyn Foundation Fogo Island Arts Young Curator Residency in 2023.

David Mowat has spent the past 30 years working in various capacities at the First Nation level, in Winnipeg, Waabaseemoong, Scugog Island and Alderville. As a researcher, writer, youth worker, economic development officer, consultation specialist, Band councilor and most recently as the elected Chief of Alderville First Nation, Dave has remained committed to the positive advancement of his communities. His passion remains researching and understanding the treaty, military and settlement history of southern Ontario as it pertains to Alderville but also the Mississauga Nation as a whole. This acquired knowledge over decades, including his academic pursuits in the study of history, allows Dave to defend the Mississauga Anishinabeg presence in southern Ontario with confidence and commitment. Dave is also a long-time blues musician/singer, having taken up the harmonica back in the early 1980s not long after relocating to north end Winnipeg. He still plays professionally in Toronto and south-central Ontario, which balances his political and historical interests. As a traditional wild rice harvester too, he is a staunch defender of this aboriginal right across our treaty areas. In the wake of the Williams Treaties Settlement Agreement Chief Dave’s main intent was and continues to be to secure the settlement for Alderville both for the immediate and long-term viability of the community. Along with his wife Janet and their granddaughter Brooklyn, Dave lives in the home he built in Alderville (24 years ago), adjacent to his beloved Black Oak Savanna and Tallgrass Prairie, where he and Janet also raised their 3 children.

Laura J. Murray, a settler scholar raised in Toronto, is Professor of English and Co-Director of the Graduate Program in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. She has worked across a wide range of topics including copyright law, media history, and Indigenous history, and methodologies including oral history, walking tours, and podcasts. She is co-lead with Dorit Naaman on a multi-year SSHRC-funded project titled “A Totem Pole on a Pile of Garbage: Contending with Environmental and Colonial Violence in Kingston, Ontario.” Her most recent publication is “We Are the Ones That Make the Treaty”: Michi Saagiig Lands and Islands in Southeastern Ontario” (Ethnohistory 70 (3), 2023, pp. 231–258).

Ryan Osman is a Mauritian Photographer and Water Resources Specialist based out of Wasaga Beach, Ontario. His work sits at the intersections of environmentalism and photojournalism. He endeavors to bridge his work to the many underrepresented and marginalized communities whose access to the arts, nature, and sports, have been historically, and continually denied. Over the years, he has worked with a variety of BIPOC athletes, environmental organizations, communities, and individuals to showcase their work/talents, as well as learn, and listen to their ideas, issues, and stories.

Ryan works as a Field Photographer and Water Resources Specialist for the NGO Water First, which collaborates with Indigenous communities in Canada to address local water challenges through education and training. He is a member of the Board of Directors and the Artist Collective of Uplift Black Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion in Simcoe County. In 2021, he won the international “Greatest Wave” surf photography contest organized by Surf the Greats, Ripcurl Canada and Aquatech Imaging Solutions. In the Fall of 2021, 7 photos from his collection “Further North” were featured in the “Past, Present, Pause” exhibition at the Be Contemporary Gallery in Innisfil. In 2022, Ryan joined the Call to Action #83 Project. Inspired by Canada’s Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Call to Action #83 brings together 14 Indigenous and non-Indigenous Simcoe County artists to share stories, gain understanding and collaborate on a linked series of artworks related to the theme of Truth and Reconciliation.

Noah Scheinman is an emerging multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker with a background in architecture and design. His creative work has been presented in various group contexts, and in 2020 he had a solo exhibition at Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre. His project Tomorrow’s Geology Today (2019) was selected for the City of Kingston’s annual public art commission, bringing together his interests in infrastructure, ecology, and waste in the form a large-scale photo essay and two sculptures which investigated the region’s history of resource extraction. Scheinman was an Emerging Artist in Residence at the Banff Centre (2020) and has participated in experimental residencies organized by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (2021), and Artscape’s Creative Placemaking Lab in Ottawa (2020). Before completing a Master of Visual Studies in Studio Art at the University of Toronto, he studied literature at McGill University and sculpture at the Ontario College of Art and Design. In parallel to his current artistic projects, which include the production of a feature-length film about the forestry industry and a sculptural intervention at the site of a former municipal landfill, he is working towards a PhD in Geography at Queen’s University, where he researches the political ecologies and networked arrangements of contemporary logistics.

Seating will be available. If there is anything else we can do to support your participation, please reach out to Hannah at hkeating@rmg.on.ca.