Brenda Mabel Reid, Underlay, 2024, quilt installation, variable dimensions. Photo credit: M+E Photography.
Take a break in The Backyard at the RMG!
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:
12:00-12:30pm – Durham Youth Orchestra String Quartet (Set 1)
12:45-1:15pm – Durham Youth Orchestra String Quartet (Set 2)
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.
Brenda Mabel Reid, Underlay, 2024, quilt installation, variable dimensions. Photo credit: Phi Doan.
Brenda Mabel Reid, Underlay, 2024, quilt installation, variable dimensions. Photo credit: Phi Doan.
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 in Nightfall, 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.
