Learn about the history of how The Robert McLaughlin Gallery came to be, with a particular focus on the permanent art collection. With now over 4,700 works of art, Curator of Collections, Sonya Jones, will share stories about key works in the RMG’s collection. Storytelling forges connections between people and ideas, making it a powerful and effective tool in talking about art. Jones will share stories that bring new meaning and appreciation to the artwork in the gallery’s collection, that are both interesting and entertaining. Taking place Tuesday, September 15 at 6 PM.
LOCATION: The Speaker Series will be held at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, located at 72 Queen Street.
Installation of Austin Henderson: Talking to Papou at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, June 2026. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid.
This virtual workshop will explore the possibilities and limits of archival research as it relates to artistic practice. Using his experience in drawing from private (familial) and public archives, Austin Henderson will discuss how archival collections can be used to in artwork to prompt questions that are often left outside of documented histories.
Guiding participants through the basics of archival research, Austin will also share his methods for going beyond the archival record. What stories are left out and why? How can we see between the archive, exploring speculative histories?
Tailored for artists, writers, and creative researchers, this workshop invites participants to bring their works-in-progress, offering time for reflection on archival materials, be they photos, written documents, or other ephemera.
This event is free and open to everyone.
Please register to attend. If there is anything we can do to support your participation, please reach out to Hannah at [email protected].
Austin Henderson is an artist, writer, and cultural worker based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang (Montréal) with familial roots in Oshawa, Ontario. Working in drawing, painting, printmaking, and textiles, Henderson’s practice engages with public and private archives in order to question concealed histories and reclaim joyful futures. Family photo albums, diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings are points of departure to bridge the past with the present. Interested in the effects of queer shame and secrecy as it relates to the AIDS crisis, his work considers the imperfections of the family archive and the futility of memory. Through replication and translation, he envisions an alternative space where truth and fiction hold equal weight. Henderson’s work has been presented across Canada and the United States, and his writing has appeared in publications such as Esse arts + opinions and Visual Arts News. He has participated in residencies with The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Union House Arts, Momus, and the New York Academy of Art. Henderson holds an MA in Art History from Concordia University and a BFA from Queen’s University.
Help us celebrate the opening of Lana Yuan’s solo exhibition featuring new works from the artist’s residency at the gallery this summer! Refreshments will be served at 12:30pm with remarks and an artist-led tour beginning at 1pm.
This reception will follow Family Sunday, a monthly event at the gallery open to all. From 10:30am to 12:30pm, Lana will facilitate an all-ages art-making activity inspired by her exhibition. Drop-in with your family or a friend, then stick around to celebrate Lana’s show opening with snacks and a tour!
Family Sunday – 10:30 am – 12:30 pm
Exhibition Opening Reception – 12:30 – 2:30 pm
Artist Talk – 1:00 pm
This event is free and open to everyone. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Brigitte at [email protected].
The RBC Emerging Artist Residency Program is generously sponsored by the RBC Foundation.
Maybe you’ve heard of them? Makerspaces are resource hubs, often located in libraries, museums, or universities, that provide access to digital tools. Encouraging innovation and collaboration, Makerspaces are hubs of creativity that bring people together to learn and share new skills at the intersection of artmaking, design, and digital technology.
In this virtual presentation, interdisciplinary artist Lana Yuan will share how she is building her art career with the support of Makerspaces, expanding on her traditional studio practice with the tools they provide. Using examples from her own work, Lana will explain how 3D printers, CNC routers, laser cutters, and sewing machines have become a part of her creative process. The talk will include short demonstrations of these digital fabrication technologies and reflections on what it has been like to develop these new skills as an artist. Whether you’re an artist, student, or simply curious about making, this session will explore how technology can expand, not replace, creative thinking.
This event is free and will be held online. Please register to attend. If there is anything we can do to support your participation, please reach out to Hannah at [email protected].
Lana Yuan is a Critical Making and Makerspace Assistant at York University’s Markham Campus Library, and an artist working across sculpture, kinetic works, and interactive installation. Her recent interests focus on combining sculptural practice with digital technologies such as parametric modeling and 3D printing. Her work explores patterned behaviours within urban environments, with attention to how quiet intimacy, routine, and proximity shape human experience. She recently began incorporating digital fabrication processes to translate datasets and systems into material forms. Lana graduated from the University of Toronto and has exhibited at venues including the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, YYZ Artists’ Outlet, and Red Head Gallery. She is the recipient of the 2022–2023 401 Career Launcher Prize, and her work has been supported by the Toronto Arts Foundation and the Ontario Arts Council.
In partnership with the Convergence Festival in downtown Oshawa, the gallery is pleased to invite you to experience Underlay by Brenda Mabel Reid. Featuring a large modular quilt made of construction-grade materials, Underlay is an outdoor installation designed for rest and connection. It has toured across the country, including to Saint John, New Brunswick, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Kitchener and Cambridge, Ontario.
Installed in the shady serenity of The Backyard, participants are invited to join and leave our community nap at any time. The Nap Team will be present to support your nap experience.
Musical performances and guided relaxation will take place throughout the afternoon:
1:45-2:30pm – Guided Relaxation with Kate Carson (Session 1)
2:45-3:30pm – Guided Relaxation with Kate Carson (Session 2)
This event is free and open to everyone. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Hannah at [email protected].
Brenda Mabel Reid is an emerging non-binary visual artist with a social practice. They have a background in architecture and are based in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Their work explores friction between place, care and social expectation, often through means they find humorous. They often work through collage as a way of making and understanding, collecting snippets, reinterpreting pieces, and assembling spaces and places to exist in. Their practice includes textile, print-making, sculpture, installation and audio.
Underlay is a large-scale quilt made of construction-grade materials by the artist Brenda Mabel Reid. In this quilt, thread is replaced with sheathing tape, gromets, and reflective nylon rope to create a customizable quilt composed of individual hexagonal blocks. Thanks to the work’s durable materials and flexible scale, it has been installed both indoors and outdoors, in different configurations, and under variable weather conditions. Over the years, participants have been invited to lie under the quilt next to both friends and strangers. They rest, dose off, maybe even socialize. The installation is accompanied by live music and the hospitable care of the Nap Team who support diverse engagement with the project. Through their materials, Reid combines the visual languages of textiles and construction into their work. Doing so, they blur the lines between two historically gendered forms of labour, embracing the qualities of both in a creative and inclusive gesture of community care, which is highly visible, improvised, and playful.
Underlay will be on view at the RMG later this fall inNightfall, a group exhibition exploring the passage of time, interdependence, and rest.
Established in 1993 by Oshawa violinist John Beaton, the Durham Youth Orchestra provides young musicians with the enriching experience of performing music by many great composers, including Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky. The goal of the DYO is to nurture the artistic and personal growth of young musicians through the experience of playing orchestral masterpieces. The DYO provides the wonderful opportunity for young people with a passion for classical music to develop their musical skills and hone their talent in an orchestra setting! Membership is drawn from young musicians in the community taking private and/or school-based music instruction.
The Durham Youth Orchestra performs in a minimum of three concerts each season. The orchestra’s involvement in the community includes educational concerts presented to Durham area students. Through these efforts, orchestra members gain valuable performing experience and help contribute to the musical culture of Durham Region. More information: dyomusic.com/about.
Kate Carson is a Yoga and Meditation Guide specializing in Yoga Nidra, Meditation, Heart Imagery®, and immersive sound experiences. With over a decade of experience teaching yoga rooted in deep rest and relaxation, Kate creates and facilitates transformative rest and sound experiences throughout Durham Region and Ontario.
Her work is guided by a simple purpose: to help people reconnect with themselves through relaxation practices, creative experiences, and heart-centred rituals that cultivate greater resilience, harmony, and a deeper sense of self.
Kate is also the founder of Vila — a mobile meditation studio offering immersive rest and relaxation experiences designed to support stress regulation, nervous system restoration, and the rejuvenation of mind, body, and spirit. Kate brings thoughtfully curated meditation, rest, and sound experiences to individuals, organizations, retreats, and events throughout Ontario, Canada. You can follow her online @katemcarson or @vilamobilestudio and visit her website katemcarson.com.
An official welcome will be delivered in the lobby at 1:30pm, followed by an artist talk with Zoe Ann Cardinal Cire in the exhibition In Plains Air, and a curatorial tour in the exhibition Everyday Matters, with Sonya Jones.
Refreshments will be served.
This event is free and open to everyone. To better support your participation and access needs, please contact greta hamilton, TD Assistant Curator, at [email protected]
Zoe Ann Cardinal Cire, Tante (Detail), dry earth pigments on raw canvas, 66”x 49”, 2026. Courtesy of the artist.
Robert Bourdeau (Canadian, b.1931); Ontario, Canada (Detail); 1978/1985; silver gelatin print on paper mounted on mat board 3/30; Gift of Sean Bourdeau, 2016
Julia Dault (Canadian, b. 1977); Jazz Hands (Detail); 2014; acrylic and oil on canvas in painted wood frame; Gift of Robert Desjardins and Pamela Dinsmore, 2024
Join us to learn about Oscar Cahén’s early career in Canada as an illustrator. Guest lecturer Jaleen Grove is a Canadian artist and art historian whose research focuses on the history of illustration in the United States and Canada, illustration research, and periodical studies. She has conducted extensive research on Canadian illustrators and magazines, including authoring the book Oscar Cahén: Life and Work, published by Art Canada Institute in 2015, and two chapters in the major 2017 monograph on Cahén.
It’s summer at the RMG! We have five wonderful new exhibitions to share with you, including solo exhibitions with Stephen Andrews, Oliver Husain, and emerging artist in residence, Austin Henderson. Come celebrate with us!
Curatorial and artist remarks will be delivered at 1:30pm followed by three artist-led exhibitions tours.
Pick up will be at the corner of St. Clarens Ave and Bloor St W (beside Mercer Union) at 11:45 am. The bus will leave the RMG at 4pm.
Please RSVP for the opening and/or reserve your spot on the bus here. This event is free and open to everyone. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Hannah at [email protected].
Installation view of Oliver Husain: I ♥ Snail at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2026.
Schedule of Events
1:30 PM │Formal Remarks │Lobby
1:50 PM│Exhibition Tour of The sum of the parts with Stephen Andrews
2:30 PM│Exhibition Tour of I ♥ Snail with Oliver Husain
3:15 PM│Exhibition Tour of Talking to Papou with Austin Henderson
Producers of decorative domestic objects have long borrowed from across cultures and time to create their designs. Attentive to that history, Sukaina Kubba draws from various sources in her own textile-based practice, layering and experimenting with materials and motifs. In her solo exhibition, Not Soft by Nature, she oscillates between research and free-association, weaving together fragments from a range of textiles, including a family rug and multiple artefacts from the Permanent Collection of the Textile Museum of Canada.
In this event, the artist will walk through her exhibition with the Textile Museum’s Senior Curator, Roxane Shaughnessy. Together, they will reflect on the historical and contemporary threads that are alive in this exciting new work and the selection of artefacts on display from the museum. Telling stories and posing questions, Sukaina and Roxane will explore the artist’s approach to archival engagement and draw connections between the creation, care, and presentation of the objects belonging to the museum and those produced by Sukaina and her collaborators.
The talk will begin in the exhibition and conclude with continued conversation over tea and treats. Participants are invited to listen, learn, and share alongside our guests.
Seating will be provided.
This event is free and open to everyone. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Hannah at [email protected]. Please register for this event here.
Sukaina Kubba is an Iraqi Toronto-based artist whose work is rooted in material and cultural research, material experimentation, storytelling and drawing connections. Kubba has exhibited at Oakville Galleries, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa, Western Exhibitions, Chicago and Patel Brown, Montreal. In Toronto she has shown work at Venus Festival, two seven two gallery, Patel Brown, Greater Toronto Art Triennial at MOCA , Mercer Union SPACE Billboard Commission, the plumb, The Next Contemporary, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Aga Khan Museum. She has also exhibited in Scotland at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, Glasgow International and Kendall Koppe, Glasgow. Kubba has attended residencies at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York and La Wayaka Current, Chile. She is a sessional lecturer in Visual Studies at the University of Toronto, and was previously a curator and lecturer at The Glasgow School of Art.
Roxane Shaughnessy, Senior Curator and Manager of Collection at the Textile Museum of Canada, leads the strategic development and advancement of the Museum’s permanent collection of over 15,000 textiles, and promotes public access and engagement, both digitally and through a community-focused approach to object display. She has over twenty years of experience curating exhibitions from the collection, including Printed Textiles from Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Studios (2019) whichwonthe 2021 Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Museums. She is the project lead on the articulation of the Museum’s Collection Development Strategic Plan, developed with a commitment to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and centered on community consultation. She holds a Master of Arts in Anthropology.
Artist Talks (2025) with Durham College students at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, May 14, 2025.
Join us at 1pm on May 13th for an artist-led tour of EMERGING VISIONS, an exhibition that presents thesis projects by the third-year graduating students of the Fine Arts Advanced program at Durham College.
We welcome staff and students from Durham College and any members of the public who want to learn more about specific projects and hear about the journey from conception to fabrication to presentation. This event is free and open to everyone.
If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Hannah at [email protected].
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