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

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)

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 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.

The RMG’s Juried Gig Poster Show Coming May 2013

By Kyle Kornic, RMG Public Relations Intern, Winter 2013

It is easy to miss a poster on a lamppost. With all the hustle and bustle of city life, it’s hard to stop and take in the beauty of something as simple as a piece of paper advertising a local concert. However, if the time is taken to stop and admire a simple poster, the average person can discover a work of art.

Welcome to the world of music-concert posters, or as it is more commonly known: “Gig Posters”. It all began in the 1950s and 60s when posters were the cheapest and most effective way to advertise upcoming concerts. To catch the public’s eye, the posters were designed by artists to be visually captivating and unique. When they began to disappear from the streets concert promoters quickly realized that there was a market for the posters and began to sell them at the concerts. In time this phenomenon grew and different styles of gig posters began to emerge in the music scene.

Fast-forward to present day, through the hardships that the music industry has faced, to the almost-complete digitizing of music through online stores such as iTunes, to the resurgence of vinyl records, one thing is certain; fans want something they can hold. A quick internet search reveals hundreds of artists with thousands of gig posters available to view or purchase, clearly the culture is still strong, if not stronger than ever. Bedrooms, apartments, and houses across the world have their walls adorned with priceless pieces of art created out of pure love for not only art, but also music.

The formats may change, the music might evolve, but passion never dies. Because of this, artists will continue to create visual masterpieces to adorn lampposts, bulletin boards, and the walls everywhere. To see some great examples of these posters visit www.gigposters.com or visit The Robert McLaughlin Gallery on Friday 3 May, 2013 for the 2^nd annual Juried Gig Poster Show.

Interested in submitting a poster? Click here to learn more.

Stay up to date on the event by connecting to the Facebook Event Page.

Gig poster by Michal Majewski, the artist who inspired the creation of this event series.

Free Family Programming for 2013

Happy New Year!

It isn’t an overstatement to say that in 2013 the RMG has big plans to expand our programming to include lots of new free opportunities for families to engage with art. We love our community and we know that families work hard all week and want to hang out on the weekend and have quality family time. We’re hoping that in 2013 you’ll choose the RMG once a month as a place to learn, connect, and communicate with your family through the creative arts.

In 2012 we launched the incredibly successful OPG Second Sundays program. It’s a free art workshop series on the second Sunday of each month, sponsored by Ontario Power Generation. We had a great response and held many jam-packed art workshops. Due to popular demand, we’re expanding that program this year so that registration is no longer required, and all are welcome! All families should drop-in between 1 and 3pm on the Second Sunday of each month to work with gallery staff on guided art projects with themes celebrating the Lunar New Year as well as our many exhibitions.

Check out the OPG Second Sundays Schedule here.

We’re also introducing a new space in the gallery that is dedicated to families who want to visit the exhibitions with kids, and provide a chance for them to play, learn, and be inspired by art. Linger in the new Imagination Station! This space is currently being transformed into a family-friendly area with seating, books, toys, craft supplies, and cool interactive tools that will inspire, educate, and engage kids of all ages and abilities. The Imagination Station is launching in February, with an opening party on Family Day, Monday, 18 February. We are opening on Family Day for the first time in 2013 and are offering a free program to families. Come check out what we’re up to from 1-3pm. Enjoy light refreshments and a chance to try out the new Imagination Station (we’re calling it iStation for short!) The following weekend, we begin the regular iStation schedule, with the space being managed by trained educational volunteers who will help manage and guide craft projects, every Saturday and Sunday.

You might think that was all we planned to offer in early 2013…but you’d be wrong! We’re also hosting a Festival of Colours celebration for families on Sunday 24 March. Phew!

If you’ve ever considered enrolling kids in our PA Day Camps, March Break Camps or Summer Camps, these free family sessions will help familiarize you and your kids with staff and the facility, so that the transition to full day camps is easy and exciting.

The RMG’s staff and volunteers are looking forward to meeting new families and connecting in new ways our community. If you have any questions about our free family programming, do not hesitate to connect with us. Email us at [email protected] or drop us a line on facebook at www.facebook.com/theRMG.

RMG Friends Ignite Durham Announce Start-Up Boot Camp!

We recently hosted the DATCA awards at an RMG Fridays event. During the evening our friends from the Spark Centre announced this new initiative that is designed to encourage start-up business in Durham Region.

New business boot camp has $25,000 cash for entrepreneurs in Durham Region.

WHITBY, ON November 12, 2012 – Entrepreneurs in Durham Region have until January 11, 2013 to apply for Ignite, a brand-new start-up boot camp that will set two local companies on the path to success.

Ignite is presented by Spark Centre, a not-for-profit organization that offers services and support to local entrepreneurs; The Region of Durham; and VentureStart, a program that helps technology entrepreneurs in Southern Ontario. “We are on the hunt for exciting, high-potential start-ups,” said Martin Croteau, executive director of Spark Centre. “We know that Durham is full of inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs. We are going to throw the support of the entire community behind the top two companies we can find.”After a rigorous selection process involving a public Pitch Night and boardroom presentations, two “Ignite Start-ups” will be announced in early March. These two companies will then enter an intensive four-month boot camp, which includes the following: a $25,000 cash award; access to a Power Panel of high-profile entrepreneurs; and in-kind professional services from local experts in areas such as finance, marketing, and law. In addition to accelerating the success of the two chosen companies, Ignite will showcase the exceptional local resources available to all entrepreneurs in Durham. The boot camp will culminate in a public event, the Ignite Finale, on June 25, 2013 at The Regent Theatre in Oshawa.

“Durham Region is proud to partner with Spark Centre to launch Ignite, the powerful next step for the Art of Transition to continue to support a strong local creative economy,” said Kerri King, Tourism Manager for Durham Region. “Through Ignite, we will continue to promote Durham’s innovative culture, and create more well-paying jobs in our community.”Applications are available online and must be received by 5 p.m. on January 11, 2013. Please visit www.ignitedurham.ca for more information on the application process, eligibility criteria, and important dates.

Spark Centre is a not-for-profit that helps to start and grow innovative technology-based companies in Durham Region and Northumberland County. We are one of fourteen Regional Innovation Centres (RICs) that are part of the Ontario Network of Excellence (ONE). Together we support the commercialization of ideas right across Ontario. Spark Centre’s services are provided thanks to the generous financial support of the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, Durham Region, the Durham Strategic Energy Alliance (DSEA) and the Northumberland Manufacturer’s Association (NMA).