Join us in celebrating the works of the third-year graduating students of the Fine Arts Advanced program at Durham College. This evening will feature a curated experience designed by Tanika iNsight Circles, and an art activity with artist Bria Elizabeth.
Schedule 7pm – Doors Open 7pm – Art Studio Activity with Bria Elizabeth Starts 7:30pm – Welcome Remarks 8pm-9:15pm – Voices & Vibes: A Journey Through Story, Soul & Connection by Tanika iNsight Circles
Voices & Vibes: A Journey Through Story, Soul & Connection “Voices & Vibes: A Journey Through Story, Soul & Connection” is a powerful one-hour (1:10 to be exact) curated experience designed by Tanika iNsight Circles to uplift, heal, and unite through the arts. This event blends spokenword poetry, personal storytelling, interactive community-building activities, and a soul-stirring performance by powerhouse R&B singer. Centering on themes of resilience, self-expression through arts, and collective healing through community, this gathering will create a vibrant space for inter-generational authentic connections.
Where: The Isabel McLaughlin Gallery (Main Floor)
Emerging Visions EMERGING VISIONS is an exhibition that presents thesis projects by the third-year graduating students of the Fine Arts Advanced program at Durham College.
Where: Gallery A (Ground floor)
Art Activity Join local guest artist Bria Elizabeth to explore simple science into the unknown void. Participants will select a shape that resonates with them and use metallic markers to create lines and dots of particle movements that highlight different states of matter. Simple techniques will create a high contrast in colour and finish between the metallic markers and Black paper.
Where: Art Studio (Ground floor)
About
Tanika iNsight Circles is an award winning Creative Intellect, Speaker, Trainer, Host, Artist, Event Curator, and HIP HOP EDU Creator at HIP HOP TIL INFINITY.
Bria Elizabeth is a local artist who has led community projects with non-for profit organizations in the Oshawa area. She has her degree as a specialist in Media/Studio from UTSC where she was first introduced into facilitating community arts projects. Her current practice involves exploring negative space and mark making using multimedia art supplies. She currently has been involved with local arts collective Ruckus for the past few years and is passionate about art accessibility for marginalized communities and people groups. She believes that art is for everyone or anyone whether the art is created and stays in your home, in community spaces or galleries.
RMG Fridays An anchor of the cultural calendar in Durham Region, RMG Fridays are community events that bring together various art forms. Designed for all ages they feature a variety of live music, performances, exhibition tours, artist talks, and highlight community partners and local businesses.
Join us in celebrating the opening of Tom Dean: GOOD-BYE! The artist and curators will be in attendance. Please RSVP using this form.
Coming from Toronto? We’ll pick you up! Save your seat on the art bus shuttle using the RSVP link above. The bus will collect guests from Factory Theatre (125 Bathurst St, Toronto) at 11:30am and return around 5pm.
Refreshments provided.
Read more about the exhibition here. This event is free and open to everyone. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Hannah at [email protected].
Help us celebrate the opening of Karen Kar Yen Law’s solo exhibition at the gallery! Inspired by diasporic narratives, and the flavour profiles of Chinese cuisine, this exhibition will feature multimedia artworks that incorporate Law’s interest in bridging the languages of printmaking and painting.
At 1:30pm, the artist will reflect on her time in the RBC residency program and share insights into her new work in an artist-led walkthrough of the exhibition.
Inspired by the bright bold colours in our current Permanent Collection Exhibitions Resistance,and Go BIG we will be creating BOLD textured abstracts to overcome the dull of winter.
Suitable for ages 3+
Free admission, no registration required.
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a proud participant in Ontario Power Generation’s Power for Change Project, supporting the areas and people where OPG operates.
Presented in partnership with PeaceLove and Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences, join us for an Expressive Arts Workshop focused on how art can promote mental well-being. The evening will start with a tour of the exhibition Breakthroughfeaturing the art of Jack Bush who found healing and joy through his art. The workshop will provide a safe space for participants to share, self-reflect, grow and heal through artful collage. No art experience is required. All materials and aprons will be provided.
About PeaceLove PeaceLove promotes mental wellness by using creativity and expression to inspire, heal, and communicate. We believe everyone deserves a safe space to share their emotions. Our workshops are a place to create fearlessly and honestly without judgement. A place to be vulnerable, celebrate, and empower each other.
About Ontario Shores Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences is a leader in mental health care, providing a range of specialized assessment and treatment services for people living with complex mental illness. Patients benefit from a recovery-oriented environment of care, built on compassion, inspiration and hope. Ontario Shores engages in research, education and advocacy initiatives to advance the mental health care system.
The gallery invites you to join us for artmaking and community connection in The Neighbours Art Hivebetween 12-3:30pm every Friday from January 10 to February 14, 2025. Passionate and helpful volunteers from the LivingRoom Community Art Studio will be onsite to support your creative explorations and cultivate a warm and welcoming environment for all. Participants are welcome to take their projects with them or hang them up for everyone to enjoy!
The Neighbours Project, installed at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (February 2024).
What to expect:
Everyone is welcome; no art experience required.
These drop-in events are free.
You’re welcome to come and go as you please.
Coffee, tea, and light snacks will be served.
What is an art hive?
Art Hives are safe, accessible spaces that enable people of all ages to participate in free public relaxation. In an Art Hive, traditional hierarchies, processes, and ways of being can be deconstructed and re-imagined in playful, personal, and compassionate ways.
The Neighbours Project, installed at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (February 2024).
The Neighbours Art Hive is a temporary installation at the RMG that transforms the gallery into an active studio space with help from the LivingRoom Community Art Studio. Outside of these facilitated sessions, we also invite all our neighbours to drop in any time during operating hours to make use of the free art materials on their own time. The RMG is located at 72 Queen Street, Civic Centre in Oshawa, across from the McLaughlin Branch of the Oshawa Public Libraries. The Neighbours Art Hive is in Gallery A, which is located on the lower level of the RMG. It is accessible by stairs or elevator. Between the elevator and Gallery A, you’ll pass our public washrooms. We have an accessible single-stall washroom as well as gender-inclusive multi-stall washrooms. Read more about our facilities here.
Upcoming Sessions:
Friday January 10, 2025
Friday January 17, 2025
Friday January 24, 2025
Friday January 31, 2025
Friday February 7, 2025
Friday February 14, 2025
Presented by The Catherine and Maxwell Meighen Foundation.
Let’s celebrate spring together! Back by popular demand, this free event encourages seniors (age 55+) to spend the afternoon curating their own program.
Participants may choose do the exhibition tour then have tea and snacks, do one or both of the workshop activities, do one of the workshops and then go on an exhibition tour, it’s a matter of preference.
Event options include:
Tours of the RMG current exhibitions at 1pm and 2pm
Two different drop in art making workshops
Light refreshments available in our onsite Arthurs Restaurant 1-3pm
In the Lookout (lower level) join guest artist instructor, Jade Wysotski from 1:30pm-2:30pm to create an adorable realistic kitten!
Working with black and white drawing media on toned paper, this piece will have a soft and realistic look. Participants will be provided with simple line art and use mark making techniques to communicate texture and form. This activity is suitable for all drawing abilities!
In the studio (lower level), participants are encouraged to make unique cards! Create stamp printed leaves on a watercolour background. This workshop is supported by the Learning and Engagement team!
In Arthurs, enjoy light refreshments.
Join us at 1pm and 2pm for tours of our current exhibitions.
Seniors Programming has been made possible thanks to the generous support of Sienna for Seniors Foundation.
We’ll be open from 5-7pm during the Bright & Merry Market!
Drop by for some cozy beverages and treats, enjoy a tour of our new exhibitions, and find holiday gifts at the RMG Shop.
Feed the Need Donation Box will be at the gallery for your donations.
The RMG reserves the right to cancel this event due to circumstances beyond RMG’s control or not reasonably anticipated, including but not limited, to weather, or inability of Facility to host Event.
Join us for the final RMG Friday of the year! The evening will kick off with a performance by RBC Emerging Artist in Residence Vanessa Godden followed by the O’Neill CVI Dance and Movement Studies students. In the Lookout, DRIFF will be screening Common as Red Hair by Robbie Robertson.
Vanessa Godden, Transference (2024), performed at the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, October 13, 2024. Image by Henry Chan.
7-8PM Transference: A performance by Vanessa Godden
Transference is a performance by RBC Emerging Artist in Residence Vanessa Godden. Throughout the performance, Godden will submerge their body in containers of different sizes filled with salt water. The artist’s movement, and the resulting sounds, will interact with a sound composition produced in collaboration with Markham-based Visual and Sonic artist, James Knott. The composition includes audio collected by Godden during their residency at the RMG, field recordings from Trinidad and Tobago, experimental steel pan recordings, and a choir of sounds collected from Queer and Trans loved ones. The performance serves as a bridge between Godden’s Non-Binary Queer diasporic existence in the West and the lineages of movement instigated by colonization of South Asia and the Caribbean.
The RBC Emerging Artist Residency Program is generously sponsored by the RBC Foundation’s Emerging Artist Project.
The artist thanks the Canada Council for the Arts for their support of this work.
O’Neill CVI Dance and Movement Studies students perform, choreographed by Kiera Beaugh and Megan Nadain.
This piece dives into the language of anxious movements—the nervous ticks, repetitive gestures, and subconscious rhythms we turn to when unease sets in. Each motion draws from the tension between comfort and compulsion, exploring how, in moments of distress, we may find solace in patterns that are both familiar and self-destructive. This piece invites the audience to witness the complexity of self-soothing behaviors and the ways we navigate our inner landscapes in search of calm, even in places that may not offer it.
Kiera Breaugh is a dancer/choreographer whose style lives at the intersection of contemporary and hip hop. Kiera has a BA in Dance from LMU in Los Angeles. While in LA, she was a member of LA dance companies: the Young Lions, Immabeast, Immabreathe and MashUp Contemporary Dance Company.
Kiera has performed in Dance Matters, A Woman’s Work, the Toronto Fringe Festival, the Orlando Fringe Festival, the Vancouver Fringe Festival and Dusk Dances, Hamilton. She has choreographed for PRESENCE, a site specific series commissioned by Peggy Baker Dance Productions: ProArteDanza in their Choreolab and an original piece during the half-time of a Raptors Game. Kiera has completed the Hicks Choreography Fellows Program through Jacob’s Pillow and is in the middle of a two year residency at Assembly Hall in Etobicoke offered through Toes for Dance.
Kiera has worked with and danced for artists including Ian Eastwood, Brian Friedman, Janelle Ginestra, Kylie Thompson, Mary Ann Chavez and Monika Felice Smith. Her work often explores themes such as racial identity, female upward mobility, and other ideas that aim to empower the unheard.
Our Hearts as Planets” sets out to explore the deep comfort that can come from finding connectivity and community amidst a world that can often feel incredibly overwhelming. The weight of our struggles can cause us to feel isolated, alone or misunderstood, yet letting others in and finding common ground often leads to a lightening of our mental loads and we are often reminded that we are not alone. We explored gestures and movement phrases in isolation from one another eventually, slowly and sometimes sporadically finding their way into unison and harmony. Whatever is going on in our lives today, we strive to find gratitude to be where we are right now, with these people, dancing together, in this incredible space, for you. Welcome to our journey. I am grateful to dancers for their open hearts and minds, and for all of their beautiful contributions to the work.
Jessica Baker Photography
Megan Nadain (she/her) is a Toronto-based dancer, choreographer and dance educator originally from North Vancouver, BC. She is a graduate of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and was the recipient of the The Hnatyshyn Foundation Developing Artist Grant. She was a company member with Dancetheatre David Earle and has worked independently with Darryl Tracy, Nicole Nigro, inDANCE, Toronto Heritage Dance and Miranda Abbott. She has the pleasure of being a faculty member at The School of Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre teaching Creative Movement and Modern and has directed CCDT’s Core Apprentice Program for the past 8 years; she is thrilled to take on the directorship of the Accelerated Training Program this year. Megan is also on faculty at Dance Arts Institute (formerly the School of Toronto Dance Theatre) teaching in The Professional Program and Adult Contemporary Dance. She has also worked as a dance educator at York University and The National Ballet of Canada’s In Studio program and facilitates the dance programs at several elementary and secondary schools in Toronto. Two projects that she has been involved with that she is exceptionally passionate about are Bridging Generations Through Dance with Dancing with Parkinson’s and Moving together: Choreographic mappings of children with diverse dis/abilities and their neurological responses to a dance-play event with Coralee McLaren.
DRIFF will be screening Common as Red Hair by Robbie Robertson.
About the film: The aftermath of an emotional funeral causes a grieving father and mother to reexamine their early life decision to have gender normalization surgery performed on their intersex infant.
An anchor of the cultural calendar in Durham Region, RMG Fridays are free community events that bring together various art forms. Designed for all ages they feature a variety of live music, performances, film screenings with DRIFF (Durham Region International Film Festival), exhibition tours, artist talks, and highlight community partners and local businesses.
The RMG reserves the right to cancel this event due to circumstances beyond RMG’s control or not reasonably anticipated, including but not limited, to weather, or inability of Facility to host Event.
