The sum of the parts brings together a constellation of works by Stephen Andrews that examine how systems of war, resource extraction, and global capital are permitted through complacency and constructed through incremental, often hidden acts. At the centre of the exhibition is The Robert McLaughlin Gallery’s recent acquisition of Cartoon (2007), a landmark work comprised of 125 drawings on mylar that together form the stills of a single-channel video animation. Suspended between object and image, stillness and motion, the work foregrounds the mechanics of its own making. Meticulously translating found footage frame by frame through a labour-intensive drawing process, Andrews mimics the dot matrix of four-colour reproduction, softening scenes of violence into a disquieting pastel register.

This body of work emerges from Andrews’ sustained engagement with media coverage of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and extends this inquiry into the infrastructures that sustain violence—global oil production, militarized economies, and consumer complicity embedded in daily life. Attentive to the ways images circulate and accrue meaning, the work examines how these representations mediate our understanding of global events. Across the exhibition, Andrews proposes that no image, gesture, or action exists in isolation. Each is part of a broader network of cause and consequence. In bringing these works together, The sum of the parts considers how these systems are assembled and how they might, through sustained attention, be understood differently.

Stephen Andrews was born in 1956 in Sarnia, Ontario Canada. Over the last forty-five years he has exhibited his work in Canada, the U.S., Brazil, the UK, France, Italy and Japan. He is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and other public institutions as well as many private collections.  He was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2019 His work deals with memory, identity, technology and their representations in various media including drawing, animation and painting.

I ♥ Snail is an immersive video installation by Oliver Husain that examines IMAX cinema as both an experimental film format emerging in the 1960s and a technology later mobilized as a tool of nation-building. The exhibition title is drawn from a sticker found in the archived papers of Toronto-based filmmaker Graeme Ferguson, one of the inventors of IMAX cinema. Conceived at Montreal’s Expo 67, and first realized at Expo Osaka (1970), IMAX was developed from the experimental film and expanded cinema movements into a global exhibition standard. The elaborate early theatres were significant architectural landmarks, operating as both national expos and theme parks, while serving as highly visible sites of cultural ambition and technological spectacle.

This exhibition centres on the premiere of Golden Snail (2026), a new edit and immersive 3D installation of Husain’s original IMAX film Garden of the Legend of the Golden Snail (2019). The work takes as its point of departure the Keong Emas (Golden Snail) Theatre in Jakarta, inaugurated in 1984 as Indonesia’s first IMAX cinema. Conceived under the initiative of the late Madame Suharto, the theatre’s monumental, snail-shaped architecture draws on a popular folk tale about a princess transformed into a snail, while simultaneously operating as a symbol of technological prestige and state-led modernization.

Husain situates this cinematic landmark alongside another contemporaneous project: the introduction of the Golden Apple snail as a new protein source for rural populations in Indonesia. Promoted as an efficient, future-oriented solution to food security, the snail was framed as a rational intervention aligned with national development goals, even as it later proved to be deeply environmentally destructive. By bringing these two histories into dialogue, Golden Snail traces how spectacle and sustenance, myth and modernization, were mobilized through a shared figure. Moving fluidly between the miniature and the monumental, the film reflects on how grand technological visions and everyday biological interventions alike became tools of nation-building, revealing the slippages between aspiration, control, and unintended consequence.

The exhibition also includes the premiere of IMAX Nation (2026), a film installation housed within a series of sculptural works representing various IMAX theatres constructed from paper. The installation contains a Super 8 film shot over three years at early IMAX sites including Ontario Place in Toronto, La Géode in Paris, Futuroscope in Poitiers, and Taman Mini in Jakarta. In a deliberate reversal of scale, this film about the largest analogue format ever produced was shot on Super 8, the smallest available gauge, foregrounding the paradoxes embedded in IMAX’s technological scale and utopian ambition.

Artist Bio
Artist and filmmaker Oliver Husain is based in Toronto, Canada. His projects are often collaborations with other artists and friends; and often begin with a fragment of history, a rumour, a personal encounter or a distant memory. He uses a wide range of cinematic languages, technical experiments and visual pleasures — such as dance, puppetry, costume, special effects — to animate his research and fold the viewers into complex narrative set-ups. 

This Exhibition has been supported by Partners in Art under its Artist-Direct Program.

We are pleased to present the annual Durham College Thesis Exhibition!

Like all visionary explorers, the students in Durham College’s Fine Arts Advanced program are involved in a continual process of identifying and studying meaningful subjects that pertain to their own evolving bodies of work. They first research then develop strategies unique to their practice through experimentation, all the while learning to define and focus their personal interests. This exhibition includes a wide range of subjects, interests, and mediums.

Celebrate EMERGING VISIONS with the staff and students of Durham College! The opening reception will be hosted on May 1, 2026. Then, stop by the gallery at 1pm on May 13^th for an artist-led tour of the exhibition. This is your chance to learn more about specific projects and hear about the journey from conception to fabrication to presentation.

Not Soft by Nature marks the first museum solo show in Canada by artist Sukaina Kubba. Building on previous research on the cultural production of textiles, the exhibition presents an expansive installation based on the history of lacemaking and its global trade. Oscillating between research and free-association, Kubba weaves together motifs, figures, flora and fauna from rugs and textiles from a family rug, a 17th century rug fragment, and multiple artefacts from the Permanent Collection of the Textile Museum of Canada. This anachronistic layering of various materials and time periods references earlier guild-based production of decorative domestic objects such as rugs, wallpapers, and fabrics, which would often borrow motifs from a wide array culturally specific designs and objects. Working in collaboration with MYB Textiles, the last remaining operational lace mill in Scotland, Kubba mirrors this approach, creating a painterly design influenced by various historical textile fragments and reproduced as large bands of lace that envelop the exhibition space. By including elements that evince the tools of their creation as well as various iterations and copies produced in different materials, the work reflects on lace as an object of cultural transmission as well as the histories of domestic, industrial, and colonial production that have shaped it.

Sukaina Kubba is an Iraqi-born artist whose work is rooted in material and cultural research, material experimentation, storytelling and drawing connections. Kubba has exhibited at Western Exhibitions, Chicago and Patel Brown, Montreal; in Toronto at Venus Festival, two seven two gallery, Patel Brown, Greater Toronto Art Triennial at MOCA, Mercer Union SPACE Billboard Commission, the plumb, The Next Contemporary, Art Gallery of Ontario and Aga Khan Museum; and in Scotland at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow Project Room, Glasgow International and Kendall Koppe. In 2026 Kubba will also exhibit at Carleton University Art Gallery and Oakville Galleries. Kubba has attended residencies at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York and La Wayaka Current, Chile. She is a sessional lecturer in Visual Studies at the University of Toronto, and was previously a curator and lecturer at The Glasgow School of Art.

Installation of Sukaina Kubba: Not Soft by Nature at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2026. Photos by Toni Hafkenscheid.

Exhibition presented with support from:

The artist would like to thank all of the staff at the RMG, especially Leila Timmins for the invitation and unwavering support, Flora Shum and Raoul Olou at Paperhouse Studio, Margo Graham, Sherry Campbell and the team at MYB Textiles, Laura Bydlowska, Lycia SFA, Scott Speh at Western Exhibitions, and family and friends: Hamza Kubba, Salah Kubba Jamila El-Assaad, Sameer Farooq, Diyar Mayil, Sara Naimpour, Madelaine Russo and Liam and Zoe.

Special thanks to Pudy Tong, master printer and cheerleader, Marcus Mazurek for the exhibition music, love and patience, and Bernie.

Mutualism (Fixed Assets) is a new temporary public artwork for the backyard at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery. This ambitious new installation builds on Rogers’ interest in human- built infrastructures for the care and support of non-human beings. Taking the form of a site-responsive bird feeding station, the work is assembled from broken automobile parts scavenged from roads and highways. This reuse of discarded materials connects with the industrial history of Oshawa, while proposing possibilities of ecological renewal out of the wreckage.

Bio
Scott Rogers was born in Mohkinstsis Calgary Treaty 7 and lives in Tkaronto, Canada. His practice negotiates the complex relationships between humans, other living beings, and land. Notable recent projects include Ormston House (Limerick, IR), ATLAS Arts (Skye, SCO), Pink Snow (Berlin, DE), Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Koraï Project Space (Nicosia, CY), Kunstverein München (DE), Ivory Tars (Glasgow, SCO), Kamias Triennial (Manila, PH), and Franz Kaka (Toronto). In 2017 Rogers co-edited “Recognition”, the 14th issue of the journal FR DAVID, in collaboration with Will Holder and published by KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin, DE). Scott’s audio installation Songs to the Sun was recently acquired for the Circulating Public Art Collection of Markham (CA). In 2025 he organised Affinities, an exhibition with two seven two gallery (Toronto), and presented Between Leaf & Light, a new site-specific sound installation for the Cancer Program at Barrie Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre.

Installation of Mutualism (Fixed Assets) at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (February 2026). Photos by Toni Hafkenscheid.

Georgia Fullerton’s art tells a deeply personal story of healing, transformation, and self-discovery. Through her art, she has navigated trauma, embraced change, and pursued personal growth. Now, as an expressive arts therapist, Fullerton helps others uncover the transformative potential of creative expression.

In 2010, Fullerton survived intimate partner violence — a pivotal event that profoundly shaped her life and practice. In the aftermath, she turned to abstract art as a means of healing. Through making, she discovered that the act of creating held the power to rebuild, repair, and reconnect her to herself.

What began as a journey of recovery has since evolved into a spiritual exploration. For Fullerton, the creative process is a space where fluid thoughts, emotions, and ideas take tangible form. She explains: “The process of artmaking inspires me and serves as both my spiritual practice and therapy. It allows me to recreate what I think about, experience, and feel.”

This exhibition showcases Fullerton’s abstract expressionist watercolours and collages, offering a glimpse into her creative process. For her, the act of making is as significant as the finished work. Together, they demonstrate how art becomes a vital tool for processing emotion and fostering personal transformation. Fullerton reflects: “Through my art, I hope to inspire others to trust their process, embrace uncertainty, and find their own path to self-discovery, healing, and change.”

Georgia Fullerton is a Jamaican Canadian visual artist, expressive arts therapy practitioner, and arts educator based in Ajax, Ontario. She studied visual arts at Red Deer College and earned a Bachelor of Arts from York University. She is a graduate of the CREATE Institute’s Expressive Arts Therapy program and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Theology in the field of Spiritualities and Community Engagement at Martin Luther University College.”

Organized by The Art Gallery of Mississauga

A member of Curve Lake First Nation and citizen of the Nishnaabeg Nation, artist Olivia Whetung draws upon her experience working on and with the land to create artworks that speak of the interdependence and relationality within our ecosystem.

Researching land-based and food de-commodifying movements, Anishinaabe knowledge, and the ecology of her home territory, Whetung has produced a series of sculptural installations, digital prints, and three-dimensional beadworks that articulate the vital connectivity between woodland, wetland, and garden environments. The artist’s first-hand observations are nourished by a critical understanding of Western agricultural models and natural science methodologies as detrimental to the ecologies of Southern Ontario, where they have caused massive environmental destruction. Western worldviews, brought over by European settlers, treat only cleared farmland as “productive” while deeming woodland and wetland unmanageable and useless. These outlooks centre human needs and desires at the expense of the ecosystem’s survival.

Whetung’s poignant works solicit our attention and reconsideration of spaces and species that are crucial to biodiversity and to sustainable food production. Tenderly foregrounding our more-than-human neighbours, they remind us that we are not the only ones to benefit from the land’s gifts, nor to suffer from ecological ruin. The exhibition’s Anishinaabemowin title, inawendiwok, loosely translates as “they are related to each other,” emphasizing the ways in which coexistence within the ecosystem is mutually linked. With human yearning for endlessly available resources and sanitized nature comes devastating loss. Only through a renewed understanding of kinship and gratitude may we restore an ecology based on responsibility and reciprocity that can sustain the future.

Olivia Whetung is anishinaabekwe and a member of Curve Lake First Nation. She completed her BFA with a minor in anishinaabemowin at Algoma University in 2013, and her MFA at the University of British Columbia in 2016. Whetung works in various media including beadwork, printmaking, and digital media. Her work explores acts of/active native presence, as well as the challenges of working with/in/through Indigenous languages in an art world dominated by the English language. Her work is informed in part by her experiences as an anishinaabemowin learner. Whetung is from the area now called the Kawarthas, and presently resides on Chemong Lake.

Mona Filip is a contemporary art curator and writer based in Toronto. Displacement and adaptation are core concerns of her curatorial investigations, informed by personal experiences of immigration and diasporic living. Bringing together a range of perspectives on collective memory, place and belonging, her projects examine the relationship between the personal and the political, ways of rewriting and redressing histories, museum restitution and repair, storytelling as world-building. 

Installation of Olivia Whetung: inawendiwok at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2025. Photos by Toni Hafkenscheid.

Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships continues artist Ekow Nimako’s afrofuturistic reimagining of ancient African kingdoms. Using LEGO bricks as his medium, Nimako explores the mysterious fourteenth century sea voyage of Mansa Abu Bakr II, predecessor of Mansa Musa, ruler of the ancient Mali Empire. According to legends, Abu Bakr II was an intrepid explorer, who abdicated his throne and took 2,000 ships on an expedition into the Atlantic, but was never to return or heard from again. Some accounts suggest the massive fleet reached as far as the Americas, but where they went beyond this is still unknown. Combining architecture, historical accounts, and fantastical possibilities, Nimako transcends the geometric form of LEGO to recreate the epic voyage. And in doing so, Nimako presents an uninterrupted and unco-opted narrative of Black civilizations and imagines liberated futures.

Ekow Nimako is a Toronto-based, internationally exhibiting LEGO artist who crafts futuristic and whimsical sculptures from the iconic medium. Rooted in his childhood hobby and intrinsic creativity, Nimako’s formal arts education and background as a lifelong multidisciplinary artist inform his process and signature aesthetic. His fluid building style, coupled with the Afrofuturistic themes of his work, beautifully transcend the geometric medium to embody organic and fantastical silhouettes.

Installation of Ekow Nimako: Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2000 Ships at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery 2025. Photos by Toni Hafkenscheid.

Organized and circulated by Dunlop Art Gallery.

The Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2000 Ships reading nook is presented in partnership with Oshawa Public Libraries.

We are pleased to present the annual Durham College Thesis Exhibition! Like all visionary explorers, the students in Durham College’s Fine Arts Advanced program are involved in a continual process of identifying and studying meaningful subjects that pertain to their own evolving bodies of work. They first research then develop strategies unique to their practice through experimentation, all the while learning to define and focus their personal interests. This exhibition includes a wide range of subjects, interests, and mediums.

Celebrate EMERGING VISIONS with the staff and students of Durham College! The opening reception will be hosted during RMG Friday on May 2, 2025. Then, stop by the gallery at 1pm on May 14^th for an artist-led tour of the exhibition. This is your chance to learn more about specific projects and hear about the journey from conception to fabrication to presentation.