Vintage Oshawa: Summer in the City

This blog post comes from the desk of Sonya Jones, our Assistant Curator and Curator of the Thomas Bouckley Collection.

Spring has sprung and summer is almost here! In the winter, it can be easy to go into hibernation, whereas the summer is a time to get outside for adventures and build memories. The days are longer and the weather warmer, allowing you to spend as much time as possible outside. For me it represents gardening, patios, hiking, and most importantly, vacation. Some of the best summer vacations can be “stay-cations,” where you spend your holiday at home taking full advantage of your backyard and seeing what your city/town has to offer. The Thomas Bouckley Collection contains many images showing summer’s past in Oshawa, including historical residents cooling off in the lake, relaxing, playing outdoor games, and generally basking in the sun. The images celebrate summers experienced in Oshawa and capture the spirit of the season.

Oshawa-on-the-Lake, 1915

With this in mind, we have launched our Vintage Oshawa: Summer in the City project. Each week summer images from the Thomas Bouckley Collection will be posted to our tumblr page (click here) so be sure to bookmark it!

Not only do we want to feature images from the collection in this online exhibition, but we also want to represent the city, past and present, by having the community post their own images of Oshawa in the summer. This could be anything from recent family barbecues in the backyard to swimming lessons at Rotary Park. How do you like to spend the summer in Oshawa? What are some of your favourite hot spots?

Sonya in the Oshawa Valley Botanical Gardens

One place I visit on my lunch breaks in the summer is the beautiful Oshawa Valley Botanical Gardens.

It’s easy to submit your photos or videos to this online exhibition. Be sure to include information about the images, such as a story, where it was taken, and the approximate date. Let’s celebrate summer and revel in memories built in Oshawa.

Help us create a visual history of summers in the city!

Click to visit www.vintageoshawa.tumblr.com

The Curator’s View: International Museum Day

The Curator’s View comes from the desk of Linda Jansma, Senior Curator at the RMG.

This Saturday, 18 May marks the 34^th International Museum Day. The entire month is actually set aside as one in which we can celebrate our collective histories by sharing our heritages, cultures, ambitions and dreams through what’s being offered in museums, art galleries, heritage sites etc. throughout the world. This year, the RMG is one of over 30,000 museums in over 100 countries on five continents that will mark a day in which we examine our place within our community and how we can affect change through our exhibitions, programs, workshops, art classes, and concerts.

2013’s theme, which is set by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) is

Museums (Memory + Creativity) = Social Change

ICOM states:

This truly optimistic theme in the form of an equation dynamically gathers several concepts that are essential to define what a museum is today, highlighting the universal nature of those institutions and their positive influence on society.

Currently, we have Richard Harrington: Arctic Photographer installed in our Alexandra Luke I Gallery space. Large-scale black and white photographs of Inuit from the 1950’s showing beautiful, yet, at times, disturbing images. Interestingly, these arresting photographs affected change once viewed in the south. Government assistance was initiated to help relieve some of the suffering that people in the North were experiencing at that time. Harrington, through his creativity, affected social change. The accompanying sculpture by Charlie Sivuarapik provides both critical context and dialogue between a non-Inuit photographer and an Inuit carver who mediates, on a much more personal level, his experience of the North.

Oshawa Art Association Opening

In other spaces we share riches from our permanent collection, a collection that is held in trust for future generations. And in yet another gallery, we are hosting the annual juried exhibition of the Oshawa Art Association. 250 people crowded into the gallery on the opening evening to celebrate the talent found within our own community. And, of course, that’s not all—our Imagination Station, CONTACT photography festival contribution with the work of Tom Ridout, and collaboration with local seniors to produce an exhibition showing the intersection of our past and present that points towards our future.

Tour Group

As the Senior Curator of the RMG, I feel honoured to be part of a team that is passionate about sharing both Memories and Creativity through art, music, lectures, workshops, art classes, and more.

I hope you can join thousands who will walk into one of those 30,000 museums and galleries on Saturday. There is so much to celebrate!

2013 Juried Gig Poster Show Winners

Our 2013 Juried Gig Poster show is now on in the E.P. Taylor Gallery!

Thank you to all who entered, supported, and participated in the Juried Gig Poster show. We had an overwhelming number of excellent entries and an incredible level of talent represented this year. We’re already excited for next year’s event, when we plan to add a People’s Choice prize!

Come in to see all of the finalists, the show closes Sunday 19 May.

Our winners, as voted by the jury (highlighted below):

Best in Show: The School of M.A.D Prize: Glenn Brody Retirement by Dani Crosby

Glenn Brody Retirement by Dani Crosby

2nd Overall: The Moustache Club Prize: Gentlemen Husbands by Wes Pratt

Gentlemen Husbands by Wes Pratt

3rd Overall: The Citrus Media Prize: No Joy by Jess Keefer

No Joy by Jess Keefer

We’d like to take a moment to thank our jury!

Luke Despatie: Despite being named one of the top ten young designers to watch by Design Edge Magazine, Luke has more than a decade of experience creating award-winning design for clients like Survivorman, The Northern Pikes, Random House, Harper Collins, PEN Canada, Yahoo! and Chatelaine, among others. A true design nerd, Luke is inspired by all things aesthetic – art, architecture, film, theatre, food, toys and comic books. Luke is owner of The Design Firm based in Port Hope and Toronto.

Vish Khanna: Vish Khanna is a Canadian musician, Radio Personality and Music Journalist. A resident of Guelph, Khanna was born in Kitchener, Ontario, and grew up in Cambridge, Ontario. Currently a Community Producer at CBC Music, Khanna has worn many hats. He has been a concert promoter in Guelph since 1997, an Assistant Editor at Exclaim! Magazine, and a radio co-host. He regularly contributes to Signal to Noise and Off the Shelf Magazines.

Dave Rosen: Dave Rosen is a cartoonist and illustrator with a lifelong passion for poster art. The former editorial cartoonist for Montreal alt weeklies Hour and The Mirror, Rosen’s art has appeared in newspapers and magazines across Canada, as well as many published collections, including four of his own books. He has also done time as a CBC broadcaster, standup comic and comedy writer. Now based in Alexandria, Ontario, he indulges his passion for graphic design as a seller of vintage paper through his online poster shop, Posteropolis.
The RMG Juried Gig Poster Show would like to thank its generous sponsors for their support.

Presenting Sponsor: The Moustache Club
Prize Sponsors:
School of M.A.D (Media, Art and Design) at Durham College
Citrus Media
Multitech Graphics
Staples
Murphy’s Pub (aka, The Hub)

Intern Files: Rachael

This post is by Rachael Dixon Lawrence, a grade 12 student at Father Leo J Austin Secondary School. Rachael is completing a co-op placement.

I chose to do my placement in the curatorial department at the RMG to further my knowledge and skills in art for my future career in animation. Fine art is very important to me because it is a way for people to express themselves in fun and interesting ways. I felt that working in a gallery would help me appreciate how everyone views artworks differently and to learn how art exhibitions are organized and displayed. Working at the RMG has really shown me how much time and effort is put into exhibition planning, and the importance of preserving artworks, photographs, and archival documents.

Before working at the RMG I did not know that Oshawa had such a large collection of artworks, and was not familiar with Painters Eleven or their importance to the gallery. I love how each Painters Eleven member’s style is very different, yet they clearly influenced each other. I have also learned about Oshawa’s history through working with the Thomas Bouckley Collection.

My favourite Painters Eleven artist is Kazuo Nakamura. I particular love this painting by Nakamura entitled Suspension.

One of my favorite jobs while working at the gallery was assisting with the placement and hanging of artworks for both the Durham Catholic District School Board and the Oshawa Art Association exhibitions. I also have enjoyed organizing hard copy photographs of artworks into files because I get to see a variety of artists and styles in the collection while doing it. I have catalogued books and historical photographs, taken inventory of books and exhibition pamphlets, researched exhibition history, made/hung labels, learned how the dewy decimal system works in the library, and hung artworks.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience at the RMG and look forward to continuing my studies in fine art and animation.

Summer Art Camp in Oshawa!

Ages 5-10
Summer Day Camp at the RMG in Oshawa

The RMG’s summer day camp program offers something for everyone! Inspired by special exhibitions and our permanent collection, each week of camp is full of fun activities in the gallery, hands-on projects in the studio, games, and lots of time to play. Activities are planned so that you can sign up for half or full days and there are pre- and post-camp options for busy families.

NEW! Pre- and post-camp care available.
https://rmg.on.ca/summer-art-camps.php

Archives Awareness Week 2013

The Durham Region Area Archives Group is hosting a show and tell night on Wednesday, 3 April from 6:00pm-8:00pm at the Pickering Public Library. Libraries and archives from Durham Region will display and discuss strange and interesting items from their collections to celebrate Archives Awareness Week 2013. The objects on display will include a note signed by Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, magic lantern slides, Victorian era postmortem photography, a circus flea, Second World War shells from the DIL plant in Ajax, and a stunt book from a student at Ontario Ladies’ College.

Plane Crash at the Four Corners of Oshawa, 1918

The RMG’s Sonya Jones, Assistant Curator and Curator of The Thomas Bouckley Collection, and Barb Duff, Library Services Coordinator are preparing our contribution to the display. The RMG’s contribution will include various historical images of a famous plane crash at the Four Corners of Oshawa, Alexandra Luke’s and Aleen Aked’s painters boxes, Isabel McLaughlin’s Order of Canada and Order of Ontario and various other oddities from our archives!

Residents from Durham are invited to attend and bring with them interesting historical items from their personal collections. There will be a meet and greet following the presentations and refreshments will be provided.

The Durham Region Area Archives Group was formed in 2011 and is the newest chapter of the Archives Association of Ontario. Its members represent libraries, archives, and historical societies in Durham Region and surrounding areas.

Festival of Colours

Check out photos from this event! Click here.

Gordon Monahan Wins 2013 Governor General Award!

The Canada Council for the Arts announced today the winners of the 2013 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts at the Cinémathèque québécoise in Montreal.

The winners are:
• Marcel Barbeau, Painter and sculptor, Montreal
• Rebecca Belmore, Visual artist, Winnipeg
• William D. MacGillivray, Filmmaker and director, Rose Bay, N.S.
• Gordon Monahan, Sound artist, composer and media artist, Meaford, Ont.
• Greg Payce, Artist-potter (Saidye Bronfman Award), Calgary
• Chantal Pontbriand, Exhibitions and events curator, art critic (Outstanding contribution), Montreal/Paris
• Colette Whiten, Sculpture installation artist, Toronto/Haliburton, Ont.

Gordon Monahan has been working closely with the RMG in the past few years.

Of Gordon’s piano performances [John] Cage once commented “At the piano, Gordon Monahan produces sounds we haven’t heard before.” – Robert Tombs, Graphic designer (nominator)

Portrait of Gordon Monahan

Below, our Senior Curator writes about the exhibition Seeing Sound she curated for Gordon Monahan in 2011.

I was very pleased to hear that Gordon Monahan is one of this year’s recipients of the Governor General Award in Visual and Media Arts.

I have worked with Gordon closely over the past 3 years. We met in the late winter/spring of 2009 when I invited him to the Gallery to see if he’d be interested in having the RMG organize a solo exhibition of his recent sound installations. It was a long lunch, and by the end of it, we’d decided that we were going to try to pull together a 30 year retrospective of Gordon’s practice and see if we could get a couple of other institutions interested in collaborating.

That original meeting led to a successful grant application to the Department of Canadian Heritage, an eight venue cross-country, plus one venue in Berlin, tour, 18,000 visitors and counting (the final venue, the Tom Thomson Gallery in Owen Sound, opens its exhibition in April), performances, lectures, and a 160 page catalogue. It’s been quite a ride. Seeing Sound is the first touring retrospective exhibition of a sound artist in Canada and it’s appropriate that it would feature Gordon’s work. He’s performed and shown his sound work nationally and internationally, and since returning to Canada in 2006 (he’d lived in Berlin, the capital of sound art, since 1992) has started the Electric Eclectics sound and experimental music festival on the Meaford farm where he’s settled.

Gordon Monahan performs Theremin Radio Interface at RMG Fridays in May of 2011.

Gordon Monahan performs Theremin Radio Interface at RMG Fridays in May 2011.

I’ve just completed the final report for the grant that we received. One of the questions asked was what was one highlight of the project. Simple. The opening was combined with the RMG Friday event in May, 2011. 90 people watched Gordon elicit electric voltage and computer generated sounds by putting electrodes into bananas, pickles and, tomatoes in a work called Sauerkraut Synthesizer, as well as perform his Theremin Radio Interference in which he controlled live radio with an early electronic musical instrument called a Theramin. The audience was in turn puzzled and amused, entertained and educated. It was a great evening.

Gordon Monahan performs Sauerkraut Synthesizer at RMG Fridays in May 2011

What’s also great? Seeing such a prestigious award granted to such a deserving artist. Congratulations, Gordon!

Read more about all winners on the Governor General’s Website: Click here.

Read more about Gordon Monahan’s practice and his art practice: Click here.

Gordon Monahan: A Piano Listening to Itself–Chopin Chord can be currently seen at 58 Summerhill Gardens, Toronto. It is on view Monday to Saturday, 5-7pm until June 22, 2013. Click to learn more.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqDsp67CUM0]

Gordon Monahan
2013 Laureate, Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts

The Intern Files: Tara Mazurk

The Intern Files is an ongoing series of blog posts written by RMG Interns. Tara Mazurk is a third-year Arts Management Student at the University of Toronto.

There’s satisfaction in assisting the RMG in endeavors which build the local community, support artistic practice across Canada, and provide a pedagogical forum for learning and engagement. As the Communications and Events Assistant, I’ve had the opportunity to coordinate artists for RMG Exposed 2012 and progress the development of the RMG’s volunteer program.

The auction at RMG Exposed 2012

With RMG Exposed, I was charged with the task of coordinating incoming submissions, creating a comprehensive database, and acting as a liaison between artists and RMG. Ultimately, the objective was to create a system which was easily accessible internally, and enhanced communication between parties. I was quick to realize the benefits of this project, both as educational experience and within a broader context.
Currently an undergraduate student in Arts Management, the RMG has been wonderful in giving me a breadth of experience in database management, fundraising and development, and in artistic programming. To coordinate selections for a charitable auction allowed me to realize not only the funding impact for the RMG, but also the indispensable relationship between artist and organization. Those who had submitted work for jury came from various locations across Canada and thus various social, cultural, and educational backgrounds; some selected artists had previously no exhibition experience. This values the placement of emerging artists within an institutional framework, and provides a new forum for discussion, display, and career development.

Guests check out works to be auctioned at RMG Exposed 2012

No stranger to the professional development acquired through volunteering, I had approached the RMG with an eagerness to learn and inherent support of their values and initiatives. Of course, it was in my natural interest to outreach to new volunteers and to align administration of the volunteer program with the RMG’s Strategic Plan. My responsibilities included researching the various venues to which we could reach interested participants. As an extension of internal operations, I helped create a volunteer database which is accessible and easily filtered for volunteer interests, availability, and current status. The RMG’s volunteer resources are invaluable; and we are currently enhancing the portfolio to provide methods for internal evaluation. At the core of everything, this provides a fitting experience and inviting atmosphere to those who are crucial in building and engaging our community.

Tara (left) and another volunteer clowning around at RMG Fridays August 2012

The Results are in! Making History: Youth Art & Writing Contest

This post comes from the desk of Sonya Jones, Curator of the Thomas Bouckley Collection.

The Making History: Youth Art & Writing Contest gave young writers and artists creative freedom to express what their community’s history means to them. Youth were asked to submit an art or writing project that was inspired by a photograph in the Thomas Bouckley Collection. I was thrilled with the diverse responses! Seven submissions were chosen to be included in a small exhibition in the RMG’s Windfield Lounge.

Courtney Dianard Departure 2012

Military fathers with their children, 1939

The five poems/short stories and 2 paintings appear next to the relevant photograph from the collection. The viewer sees the historical photograph in a new way—reinterpreting it based on the students’ creative expression. Congratulations to the winners Courtney Dainard, for the Best Overall Art prize, and Tara Zammit, for the Best Overall Writing prize. Courtney’s painting of a young girl’s sorrow at her father’s departure for war reminds us of the many children who experienced this feeling throughout our community’s history. And Tara’s poem, Open Your Ears, fills the piano room at Bishop Bethune College with joy and music.

Piano Practice, Bishop Bethune College c. 1925

Open Your Ears

Dance little tune,

Fly about the room,

Capture my soul like soup on a spoon.

Piano erupt,

Let my ears indulge,

Open them to something some never love.

But I do, yes I do!

Brother, let me preach,

For the passion in the soul is something one cannot teach.

Let the curtains billow and whisper

As the wind whips around,

Let them join in the creation of this marvelous sound.

Old books line the shelves,

Collecting memories and dust,

Unveiling secrets of history, music and lust.

It’s too much for us!

The dull mind cannot bear

All the beauty, the joy

All the strife, all the cares.

Let the pictures be an audience.

Placid faces stay calm,

Though the spirits inside dance as if they still shone.

In my white blouse and navy,

I sing sweetly along.

On a stool by the piano

Is where I belong.

The exhibition Making History on view until March 3, 2013. The historical images come alive with different interpretive narratives—giving new meaning to Oshawa’s past.