The Curator’s View: Office of Identity Collects

Sonya Jones is Curator of The Thomas Bouckley Collection. This collection of historical images of Oshawa and surrounding areas plays a vital role in the upcoming project held in Downtown Oshawa. In today’s Curator’s View, Sonya shares her experiences working on this project.

As the Curator of the Thomas Bouckley Collection, I’m able to discover and learn about the history of Oshawa on a daily basis. It has been an ongoing delight working with this outstanding collection of over 3000 images of historical Oshawa. Every four months I install a new Bouckley exhibition, most often focusing on a particular event, industry, individual, or theme of historical Oshawa. As much as the retelling of Oshawa’s history is important, it’s also fun to look at the collection in a contemporary light, which I try to do from time to time. Contemporary artists have done the same—for example in 2009, artist Brenda Joy Lem’s exhibition Homage to the Heart, explored her family’s history as owners of the first Chinese laundry in Oshawa, and Brenda looked to the Bouckley Collection for images of Oshawa incorporating them into her work. Seeing Bouckley images in contemporary pieces was inspiring.

Brenda Joy Lem

A Clear Flame 2008

silkscreen on paper

Purchase, 2009

This fall the collection will once more be recontextualized in a contemporary fashion by Saskatoon artist Heather Cline using images from the Bouckley collection as a starting point for her work The Office of Identity Collects. 16 King Street East, in downtown Oshawa, will be the location for this community-involved installation/performance, happening from October 24-28^th. During the week the artist and her assistant will be interviewing members of the community and documenting memories and stories about downtown Oshawa. In preparation, they have been exploring the Bouckley Collection online. (Click here to search the collection from the RMG’s website)

Oshawa’s story cannot be told without looking to the past, which the Bouckley Collection offers a window to.

King Street East, 1911

King Street East, 2011

When you visit the 16 King Street East location, you’ll feel like you are entering a 1950s government passport office. You’ll sign some “government” papers (permission forms), get your “passport” photo taken, fill out a survey of questions, and lastly you’ll be interviewed about your memories and thoughts about Oshawa. The whole process will take around 20 minutes. At the end of the week, on Saturday, October 29^th, the artist will conduct a Citizenship Ceremony where you’ll get your “passport” which will include a gift of a woodblock print by Heather Cline based on the King St. area. Heather will return home to Regina and begin work on a series of artworks specific to Oshawa and the stories collected with the end result being an exhibition at the RMG from September 1 – October 28, 2012. Be sure to take the opportunity to share your stories about Oshawa, and in turn participate in the creation of a community driven exhibition.

Location: 16 King Street East

Dates: October 24 – 28, Citizenship Ceremony on October 29

Hours: 11am – 4pm

The Curator’s View: Douglas Coupland @ RMG

When I drive into work, it’s hard not to smile when I look up at the building and see Douglas Coupland’s sculpture Group Portrait, 1957. It was installed less than a week ago with an “unveiling” (without the veil – the work was too large and too high to drape!) event that included Doug Coupland speaking about his public sculpture commissions.

For many of you, there have been hints about the sculpture for some months through RMG Manager of Communications & Social Media, Jacquie Severs, including glimpses of single transponders and artist sketches found in our newsletter, on twitter and through Facebook. These glimpses brought over 250 people to the Gallery on Saturday to celebrate art in Oshawa. It was particularly satisfying to hear Mayor John Henry tell Doug that the view of Group Portrait from his office window at City Hall was the best and that the artist was welcome to view it from that angle any time!

(Curator Linda Jansma, Douglas Coupland and CEO Gabrielle Peacock)

For our CEO, Gabrielle Peacock, and me, this has been a longer process. We first met with Doug Coupland in the summer of 2010 to gage his interest in working with the RMG to produce a third public art commission. In 2002, the Gallery commissioned Reinhard Reitzenstein to create River Bench, and in 2007, Mary Anne Barkhouse was commissioned to produce grace, our much loved beavers at the front of the building. Fortunately for us, Doug was not only interested, but let us know of his friendship with Arthur Erickson, the building’s renowned architect, as well as his interest in mid-century modernist painting. In the months that followed, we supplied Doug with background information on the building and its first mandate that included collecting and exhibiting work by Ontario’s first abstract painting group, Painters Eleven (1953-1960), and sent him images of work by each of the group from our collection. We not only worked with Doug, but with lawyers, engineers, the manufacturer of the sculpture, the City of Oshawa, the Canada Council granting agency, and our own staff.

Our vision with Group Portrait, and the other public sculpture that the RMG has commissioned, is to bring art into the public realm; to engage and challenge more people more often. There’s the engagement that I witness when I see people sitting on the edge of River Bench to read a book or eat their lunch close to the creek, or place their children, like I saw last week, on top of grace, for a photo opportunity. It was wonderful to see that little girl stroking the bronze “fur” of the beavers and waving goodbye to them when her mother picked her up and headed to their car. We can’t touch Doug Coupland’s newest work, but I like the idea of Mayor Henry looking up from his desk and having the “best view” in town.

None of this would be possible without the forethought of people like Isabel McLaughlin. It was her 1987 gift to the RMG, an endowment whose interest can only be used for the purchase of works for the collection, that has so richly enhanced our city.

So, thank you Miss McLaughlin and thank you Doug Coupland for helping us bring art into our community in a meaningful way!

– Linda Jansma

The Skinny: Heavy Industries Blog Post about the Installation

Oshawa Express Column: Public Art Encourages Culture

Downtown Oshawa In Transition (DOIT) Column: Outsiders are Insiders and Insiders are looking Outside in Oshawa

Robert McLaughlin Gallery sports new outdoor piece

Profile on Canadian Art.ca

See the full gallery on Posterous

The Curator’s View: September 11th.

The RMG is pleased to introduce a new feature to our blog, The Curator’s View. Our first post is from Linda Jansma, Curator at the RMG discussing her memory of working on September 11th, 2001.

The Curator’s View: September 11th

While I’m not old enough to recall where I was when JFK was shot—arguably one of the most haunting events of the 20^th century, I do recall where I was during one of the greatest tragedies of the beginning of the 21^st century: 9/11.

I was at the RMG and heard about the first plane’s strike from a gallery colleague who had received an urgent call from his brother, whose building was close to the World Trade Centre in Manhattan and who had fortunately escaped injury. From there, we listened to the CBC as the events began to unfold in the surreal fashion that they did. On that morning, our Preparator, Garfield Ferguson and I were re-installing the permanent collection in the Isabel McLaughlin Gallery surrounded by paintings that were to be hung in the coming days. Instead we sat in silence on the gallery bench listening to events that would come to define our world in such a myriad of ways.

Choosing the works for the reinstalling of the permanent collection takes many hours of walking through the vault, looking, making notes, trying to come up with a theme both accessible and challenging. 2001’s reinstallation was to include a painting by Joyce Wieland entitled Double Crash, one of her series of works involving tragedies, in this case, two planes falling out of the sky. It didn’t take much thought to know that this work had to be returned to the vault. We waited three or four years before hanging this particular painting, and during the time it was up, numerous people commented that it must be a painting about 9/11, until they noticed its date—1966.

We will be opening two exhibitions on the 10^th anniversary of September 11: Douglas Walker: Other Worlds and Sympathetic Hunting Magic: Niall Donaghy and Shelly Rahme. Niall’s work, Spitfire, occupies the gallery’s front foyer.

(Preparator Jason Dankel, who is 6’3″ tall, putting the finishing touches on the installation of Spitfire)

It looks, for all intents and purposes, like an enormous balsa wood model plane. At 4.9 meters, the plane has nose-dived directly into its base, a crash that has yet to crumble the delicate fuselage and wings.

This work, this symbol, instantly conjures the events of a decade ago (or even more recently the September 7^th plane crash in Russia that killed 43 including a team of elite hockey players). Yet the artist hasn’t depicted a commercial carrier, but a World War II Spitfire, a plane that summon yet another global conflict.

We bring our individual experiences to works of art and what we see depicted—a 1966 painting or 2011 sculpture—become signs for what is closest to our individual lives and understanding. All this without words but rather through the power of visual cues in paint and wood.

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Please join us at the joint opening reception for Douglas Walker: Hidden Worlds and Sympathetic Hunting Magic: Niall Donaghy and Shelly Rahme. Click here for the event details.