As the RMG celebrates its 50th anniversary, it is appropriate to focus on who the Painters 11 were as individual artists. The group was eclectic: Hortense Gordon and Jock Macdonald were born in the 19th century, while Tom Hodgson, the youngest of the group, was born in 1924. Most were commercial artists, including Jack Bush, Oscar Cahén, Tom Hodgson, William Ronald, Kazuo Nakamura, Walter Yarwood, Harold Town and Ray Mead. Macdonald and Gordon were educators, influencing generations of artists at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts, the Ontario College of Art and Hamilton Technical School. While she may not have seen herself as such, Alexandra Luke was a curator, organizing the first travelling exhibition of Canadian abstract painting in 1952 (originating at Oshawa’s YWCA) among many other exhibitions.

The artists banded together less because of a common philosophy, but rather to increase their opportunities to show their abstract paintings. As Macdonald noted: “The meaning of our group is the fact that we think alike about creativeness in art and the unity established is our power.” That unity was at times tested with minutes of one 1956 meeting stating that two members “nearly came to blows.” The group was, however, genuinely unified in their appreciation for each other’s work and promoting this new form of art.

 

2017 marks the 50th anniversary of The Robert McLaughlin Gallery. It all began in 1967 when local artist William Caldwell attended an art exhibition in the basement auditorium of the McLaughlin Public Library Branch. Caldwell was faced with space limitations and obstructions that made it difficult to fully view the artworks. In response, he assembled a group of like-minded individuals to come together and create the Art Gallery of Oshawa, first opening its doors in July 1967 over a shop at 7 ½ Simcoe Street South. The gallery’s opening created a place in the Oshawa community that allowed art to be accessible to all.

In 1969, the Art Gallery of Oshawa moved into a new building situated between the McLaughlin Library and Oshawa City Hall, officially opening as The Robert McLaughlin Gallery after a generous donation by the McLaughlin family. In its early years the RMG began fostering relationships with local, regional, and Canadian artists. These relationships not only provided foundations for prosperous art careers, but also as inspiration for young minds, aspiring artists and community members. In addition to artists, the RMG began developing relationships with community members such as local historian Thomas Bouckley.

In 1987 the gallery was expanded to become the building you are standing in today. During the “reopening week” the RMG formally accepted the Thomas Bouckley photographic collection and committed to be a safe repository for the collection.

Since then, the RMG has produced more than 100 Bouckley exhibitions and has continued to preserve and exhibit Oshawa’s History through photographs. The gallery continues to share, explore and engage with our communities through the continuing story of modern and contemporary Canadian art. Images from the RMG archives along with images from the Thomas Bouckley Collection allow us to look back on the earliest recorded memories of the gallery and celebrate 50 years in the Oshawa community.

We begin our 50th anniversary year by celebrating our regional artists, a community who have been at the heart of the gallery since its conception.

In 1967, William Caldwell, a local artist, sent out a call to like-minded individuals, artists and non-artists alike to shape the Oshawa Art Gallery, eventually becoming The Robert McLaughlin Gallery.

Regional artists sat on the gallery’s first board of trustees, helping to shape its vision and mission that included a mission to “foster the appreciation and to encourage and stimulate public interest in the Arts and Letters.” Over the past 50 years the RMG and regional artists would continue their relationship through exhibitions and building our permanent collection with work by local artists; by engaging artists to teach workshops and classes and to conduct critiques, lectures and performances.

Durham Reach is the most comprehensive public exhibition of artists from the area to date and showcases the work of over 70 artists. Although not a complete representation of the diversity of art being produced in Durham Region, the project includes works evenly distributed between emerging, mid-career and senior artists in four distinct, yet complimentary exhibitions. Durham Reach looks to celebrate the region’s artists, past and present, and to look forward to a strong, vibrant, and continuing arts community.

Curated by Linda Jansma and Sonya Jones

Durham Reach: Narrative of Place and Geography
Artists: Maralynn Cherry, Tony Cooper, Jay Dart, Rodney Dunn, Edward Falkenberg, Garfield Ferguson, Fly Freeman, David Gillespie, Gary Greenwood, John Krasinski, Audrey MacLean, Joaquin Manay, Jay McCarten, Mary Ellen McQuay, Sean McQuay, Jeff Morrison, Neil Newton, Todd Tremeer,Wendy Wallace, Sally Wildman, Olexander Wlasenko

Durham Reach: Narratives of Materiality, Optics, and Abstraction
Artists: Ron Baird, Meredith Bingham, Laura Clayton, Jane Dixon, Michael Drolet, Rowena Dykins, Ron Lambert, Catherine Mills, Francis Muscat, Paul Sloggett, Janice Taylor-Prebble, Judith Tinkl, Viktor Tinkl

Durham Reach: Narratives of History and Memory
Artists: Mike Berube, Darlene Cole, Grant Cole, Dani Crosby, Jane Eccles, Steven Frank, Toni Hamel, Reagan Kennedy, John Lander, Jeff Leech, Diane Lopez-Soto, Wes Peel, Ingrid Ruthig, Pete Smith, Barry Smylie, Lotti Thomas, Sally Thurlow

Durham Reach: Narratives of History and Memory
Artists: Karolina Baker, Ted Bieler, Ilija Blanusa, William Caldwell, Susan Campbell, Callum Donovan, Ron Eccles, Jessica Field, Laura M. Hair, Linda Heffernan, JR Hunter, Ruth Latimer, Gordon Law, William (Bill) Lishman, Geordie Lishman, Lynne McIlvride, Aleksi Moriarty, Dionne Powlenzuk. Ruth Read, Heather Rigby, Linda Ward Selbie, Layne Sharpe

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Durham Reach: Narrative of Place and Geography

The past fifty years has seen significant changes to the various landscapes of Durham Region, cities have expanded into each other, natures reconstructed. While the region, as an entity, has only existed since 1974, its population has more than doubled. The sheer number of people who live here dictates how we navigate our various landscapes and what its future will be.
Geography and place have been central to many of the practices of Durham Region artists. That sense of place comes from personal history, on-site inspiration and imaginings. The works in this section of Durham Reach do not all reference this region: some works are positioned from the point of view of personal history or of other landscapes, or of places and narratives of the imagination. Yet there are those works that are quintessentially Durham, that speak to the land, the waterways the skies the urban and rural spaces. Each work is unique in its understanding of geography, both culturally and literally and draws the viewers in to experience the recognizable and the new.

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Durham Reach: Narratives of Materiality, Optics, and Abstraction

The subject of art can often be about the work itself. Within abstraction, importance lies in what things look like—shape, colour, composition—and the possible optical tricks that can be played. We also may have preconceived notions about what art is supposed to be made of: paint on canvas, bronze sculpture, ink or graphite on paper. And then we’re faced with glass, fur, collaborations with humans and non-humans alike, and we’re asked to re-think those notions.
Abstract painting is part of the RMG’s historic narrative. Our story includes that of Painters 11, Ontario’s first abstract painting group whose work the gallery has championed for the past half a century. As part of Oshawa’s narrative, the first travelling exhibition of abstract art was organized by painter and RMG patron, Alexandra Luke in 1952. Luke wrote: “Painting is like life itself: you learn as you go along, what to select, what to leave out.” We celebrate abstract artistic practices that have continued, unabated, in Durham Region since the RMG’s inception as well as reach to its furthest geographic corners to discover artists who revel in the very materiality of what they have created.

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Durham Reach: Narratives of History and Memory

History can be thought of as an ordering of past events and is evidence based; memory is grounded in the personal recollections of those who have lived through events, and narrative weaves these two together to create stories of individual lives that help us to make sense of past events. Motivated by personal memories related to family history, culture and concepts of nationhood, to memories evoked through our senses, these works inspire viewers to look at the past through the lens of the specific

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Durham Reach: Narratives of Reaction and the Body

We continuously react to what is happening around us, both from personal and universal perspectives. Circumstances dictate how we respond to external and internal influences. We respond to political, technological, environmental, and historical stimuli based on who we are as individuals and what we bring to the “narrative”.
The body is often associated directly with reaction. It has been inspirational to artists throughout the centuries, exploring issues surrounding sexuality, beauty, gender and ethnicity and is also a means by which one can express individual empowerment and agency.

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ln my work I wish to pass through the ominous and emotional spatial boundaries. I am drawn to places where certain energies are closer to the surface. Such places correspond to emotional currents within me. ln certain places primordial forces seem at the very edge of the visible. These places possess a quality of power in which l feel vulnerable with a sense of ominous stillness; qualities that transcend the specificity of time.

– Robert Bourdeau

Since the 1970s, Kingston-born photographer Robert Bourdeau has gained a reputation for his large camera format images. He is particularly methodical in his preparation, contemplating a site for a prolonged period before committing to an extended exposure that allows for a maximum of detail in his finished photographs. In the images in this exhibition, Bourdeau uses film, and is not only known for his technical perfection, but the unique gold chloride solution that adds a particularly warm tone to his silver gelatin prints.

Bourdeau’s practice has been dominated by two compositional styles: the very detailed view where a rock wall might fill the entire frame, or a larger, distant view that encompasses both a great breadth and depth of a landscape. The microcosmic view is captured through the long exposure and camera size used which allows for details that draw the viewer into his world. Yet, interestingly, Bourdeau works in black and white because, as he notes it “separates the image from reality.” He has also long been interested in abandoned and disintegrated building sites. Within this exhibition are six works from his 1970s Sri Lanka (Ceylon) series. These pre-twelfth century Buddhist and Hindu temples had been reclaimed by the jungle, but had yet to be restored, speaking to an historical time that was only beginning to be regained. Bourdeau’s photographs simultaneously speak to the past and the present, within a bath of subtle light.

Edge of the Visible includes twelve recent additions of photographs by Bourdeau to the RMG collection. His aim is to understand the underlying structural complexity of nature, methodically composing each work with a subtle, clarifying light.

Yes, dash it down!
Touch but a drop with your lips,
And behold a vast ocean surrounds you,
To ruin and sink you forever!

– Sons of Temperance ceremony for Assistant Conductor, Oshawa

One of the most divisive social and politic issues of the late 19^th century and early 20^th century was the question of the availability of alcohol. It was the efforts of temperance organizations, such as Oshawa’s Sons of Temperance, that forced the hands of politicians to introduce prohibition in Ontario in 1916.

What were the motivations behind the temperance movement? The Sons of Temperance in Oshawa stated: “There is no vice which swallows up so much of hope and happiness as Intemperance. It destroys the tenderest ties of social life, and exiles the sweet endearments of home.” The rhetoric and propagandist material for the temperance movement suggested that alcohol was the source of society’s troubles: poverty, violence, crime, declining health etc. The images depicted the destructive force of alcohol in various ways, with particular emphasis on the negative affect on families. Meanwhile, the anti-prohibition movement argued that a dry Ontario produced criminals, increased secret drinking, violated personal liberties, and increased drug usage.

The temperance movement started as early as 1864 with the Dunkin Act, which permitted local municipalities to hold referendums to decide on the prohibition of alcohol sales within their communities. After the outbreak of the First World War, prohibition was seen more favourably as a sacrifice for the war effort. Ontario became officially dry in 1916, after Ontario Premier William Hearts was successful in a province-wide ban, receiving very little resistance from the opposition or the public.

The Sons of Temperance of Oshawa became a chapter on November 6 1849. The group fought to eliminate “local groggeries” and bar rooms in the community. Among the membership was a very talented orator, Edward Carswell, who travelled throughout Canada and the U.S. speaking on the issues at the heart of the Temperance Movement. The Oshawa native published several books on the importance of temperance.

In 1873, women were allowed to become members of the Oshawa chapter, which helped accelerate their cause and garner more support. With their passionate moral views about the evils of excessive drinking, and slogan of “Love, Purity, Fidelity”, Oshawa’s Sons of Temperance survived into the new century with a large following and were provincially influential in their quest for purity.

 

Reception: RMG Fridays, February 3, 7-10pm

The Portraits of Windows exhibition is broadly inspired by the varied states of mind of the captive or confined – those who look out onto the same sceneries, day after day. The paintings that make up the series reveal the environment in which each individual – that I have personally met with – lives their daily life. From prison cells to hospital rooms and convents, these spaces, which are often transitory, are the starting point for a study into how suspended time effects their occupants.

By imagining how the eyes process time, I reflected upon the distortion of reality that vision ensues; it is that very distortion which allows us to access a fertile imaginativeness. That is why I attempt to magnify the ordinary in my paintings – by creating images of uncertain subjects which hover between states of awareness, and potential escape.

My repeated encounters with a group of women incarcerated in a maximum-security facility are the starting ground for upcoming work. Their sentiments, as well as their depictions of windows, will be presented alongside my project, to foster a dialogue amongst them. The artistic experiments conducted and subsequently shown within the prison halls will be displayed in my exhibit, so that visitors may have access, and experience a connection to, these women.

The repetitive display of paintings – much like a series of windows – is intended to spur visitors into temporarily inhabiting the exhibition space and reflect on their relationship to the concept of time, when stillness imposes itself, far from the frenzy of daily life.

 

Artist’s Biography:

Elise Lafontaine lives and works in Montreal. She holds a BFA, major painting and drawing, from Concordia University (2015). She presented her work at the Luz Gallery (2015) and Art mûr Gallery (2014). She took part of the Vermont Studio Center residency (2012) and more recently Leipzig International Art Programme (LIA) (2015), where she exhibited her work at the Spinnerei Gallery Tour Autumn / Herbst Rundgang Germany. Internationally, she has participated in the Toronto Art Fair (2011, 2012), the New York Affortable Art Fair (2010, 2013),at the Tokyo International Art Fair (2010) and Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair (2009 2010).

Reception: RMG Fridays, February 3, 7-10pm

I will be creating a small grouping of works that reflect the birds and their nesting, flight, and those animals who may observe them, the snowshoe hare specifically (as I daily observe them in the woods surrounding my home).

Living in the country has provided a whole new vantage point for observing the behaviour of these animals, which appears very different from the behaviour they exhibit in urban and suburban areas with their high rise buildings and communication towers that affect flight and bird song.

This will reflect what I have come to know, as Home, a safe place from man

 

Artist’s Biography:

 Inspired by the colour, narration and design of Medieval Illuminated Books, Tapestries and Architecture, my work in tile and in sculpture explores the story of Flora and Fauna of my surrounding Landscape.

Mary works as a full time Studio Ceramic Artist, designing Tile for custom work and producing a line of Limited production, hand Pressed tile in Porcelain. Mary also produces unique sculptural pieces reflecting the animals and avian that she illustrates in her two dimensional tile.

Mary studied Ceramics and Design at the School of Craft and Design at Sheridan College, after completing a BFA in Art History and Archeology at the University of Guelph. Further studies have included Anthropology and Archeology at McMaster University, and Ceramics Intensives at Alfred University, NY.

Recipient of the Helen Copeland Award from the Ontario Craft Council, for an Established Artist working in her field. 2015.

Reception: RMG Fridays, January 6, 7-10pm
Artist Talk: January 15, 1-3pm

I seek to create musical spaces.

Artists, composers, mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers have long found structural and aesthetic equivalences between music and art.

Music is my source. I want to make music visual by composing space.

I’ve long had a dream of composing complex yet understandable spaces full of rhythms, symmetries and harmonies that are able to impart an emotional effect on the viewer.

If, as Goethe said, architecture is frozen music, I want to create rich and dynamic abstract cities of frozen music.

I call these cities The Network Vista.

I seek the public’s help (especially children) to help me build these cities with construction toys. With strategically placed mirrors, meticulous lighting, and carefully introduced motion, the spaces will be multilayered and dynamic.

I will photograph these abstract musical cities. The result will be an expressionistic three-dimensional hard-edged geometric abstraction that seeks to pull the viewer into its musical space.

Photographing these cities is an artistic end in itself. But the hands-on experience of constructing these Network Vistas is a vital step towards my next goal of animating them, thus unfreezing architecture to get closer to creating a truly visual music.

 

Artist’s Biography:

Aleksi Moriarty is a computer artist and fine-art photographer whose artistic pursuit began with a dream to create visual music using computers.

He received his BA in computer art from Hampshire College, in Amherst Massachusetts, then pursued an MFA in experimental animation at the California Institute of the Arts. From there, Aleksi worked as a senior FX Animator & Technical Director on many blockbuster movies including The Matrix, Minority Report, and Gnomeo & Juliet.

While working in movie post production Aleksi felt compelled to explore photography. He studied under Amy Kubes at UC Berkeley. His natural eye for composition, combined with his background in art history and theory, found an easy ally with the camera, a medium that uniquely conveys his awe of the world.

In 2014 he was honoured to have his work admitted to the permanent photography archives of The McMichael Canadian Art Collection. Aleksi’s limited-edition photographs can be found on the walls of private collectors in Canada, the USA, and Germany.

Originally from Connecticut, Aleksi has lived in several US states before fulfilling his lifelong dream of moving to Canada. He became a Canadian citizen in 2012.

Reception: RMG Fridays, December 2, 7-10pm

‘I’ve always been intensely determined to be happy, and I’ve often believed that I should be…But it comes over me now and then that I can never be happy in any extraordinary way; not by turning away, by separating myself.’

‘By separating yourself from what?’

‘From life. From the usual chances and dangers, from what most people know and suffer.’

– Henry James, Portrait of a Lady, 1881

 

Halton Hills-based artist Hillary Matt will install a series of recent, new, and site-specific work as part of her solo exhibition Chances and Dangers at Gallery A in The Robert McLaughlin Gallery. The work reflects her considerations toward the nature of signage and hanging flat objects; their ubiquity, accidental aesthetics, and complicated relationship to both language and images. The forms of flag poles, grocery store banners, beach towels, and laundry on clotheslines are mimicked. Surfaces are time sensitive and used as a space to document, encrypt, and repossess patterns, personal revelations, and lyrics that freckle everyday life.

Completed works to be included in the exhibition make use of collage, oil and acrylic painting, chrome-plated supports, large-scale photographs, and found textiles. New works will consist of a set of hand-poured concrete tiles inspired partly by the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a site-specific intervention that will muddy the line between artwork and sign.

 

Artist’s Biography:

Hillary Matt (b. 1990, Ontario) is a visual artist who makes flat works using image-based techniques, painting, and found materials. She conducts informal research that follows phonetic, metaphoric, and poetic associations across unrelated aspects of life and generates content for her work from her findings. Greatly inspired by car culture, music, and biographical information of famous people, she makes pictures that consider the fluidity of identity, meaning, and memory. Matt has shown her work with Carrier Arts Organization (Toronto) and Cooper Cole (Toronto). She holds a BFA from the Ontario College of Art & Design University. Chances and Dangers will be her first solo exhibition.

Art Lab: Dec 6 – Dec 30, 2016
Gallery A: Jan 4 – 29, 2017
Reception: RMG Fridays, January 6, 7-10pm
Artist Talk: January 15, 1-3pm
Workshop: January 21, 1-3pm

Note: This is a curatorial residency, the exhibition for which will be taking place during the following Gallery A timeframe from Jan 4 to 29, 2016 (see below).

Intended on-site schedule: During the residency, December 6 – 30, Anastasia will be in the Art Lab space to interact with visitors for a few hours 2 to 3 days per week. She will also be meeting with the artists selected for the project in their creative spaces and the Art Lab.

What Arises in the Process

This residency project will focus on aspects of artistic creative processes by engaging with the practices of artists Katie Bruce, Jennifer Carvalho, Rob Nicholls, and Sarah Sands Phillips. The artists’ methods will be explored, especially gradual stages involved in making, inspirations, experimentations and decisions made in compositions, as well as considerations of the spaces in which creative work is done.

Anastasia Hare’s curatorial work undergoes various stages until fruition, facets of which will also be discovered during this residency. Documentation of the curatorial process will be shared, such as excerpts, photos, and highlights of meetings, studio visits, and engagements with formal concerns, themes, techniques and other points of entry into the artists’ work. A collection of depictions of studio spaces and works-in-progress will also potentially be significant and pique further interests into the artists’ practices and processes.

Curator’s Biography:

Anastasia Hare has an MA in Art History with a diploma in Curatorial Studies in Visual Culture from York University, and a BFA in Art History and Studio Art from Concordia University. Hare has curated exhibitions at Red Head Gallery, The Drake Hotel, VS VS VS, CONTACT Photography Festival (Toronto), Studio Béluga (Montreal), The Latcham Gallery (Stouffville), PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts (Winnipeg) and The Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba (Brandon). She has written exhibition and catalogue essays on diverse practices for Hamilton Artists Inc. (Hamilton), gallerywest, Red Head Gallery (Toronto), Studio Béluga (Montreal) and ARTSPACE (Peterborough); contributed an interview to Scene, and exhibition reviews to C Magazine and Magenta Magazine. 

Hare’s curatorial practice explores a wide range of artistic work that resonates with themes of nature, memory and culture, often through broad research interests in scientific, literary and philosophical ideas. Hare’s approach includes a focus on artistic processes – an interest that stems from her own creative work in various media. Through this residency project, Hare aspires to generate dialogue around creative processes and facilitate meaningful experiences with contemporary art.

Artists’ Biographies:

Katie Bruce is an artist working and living in Toronto, whose heart remains in the Prairies. She finished her SSHRC-funded MFA with a concentration on Print Media at York University in 2015, and holds a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Lethbridge. Often working within a print media dialogue, Katie is interested in empathy, the affected/affective body, and the intersection of emotional and non-preformative labour. Her most recent body of work examines her somatic experience of anxiety; finding visuals that fit the felt sensations which frequently escape verbal expression. She is represented by Walnut Contemporary Gallery in Toronto ON, and has exhibited across Canada.

Jennifer Carvalho possesses an MFA from the University of Guelph and a BA (Honors) from McMaster University. She has exhibited nationally including recent solo exhibitions at Georgia Scherman Projects (Toronto, ON); Boarding House Gallery (Guelph, ON) and group shows at The Art Gallery of Hamilton (Hamilton, ON); The Art Gallery of Mississauga (Mississauga, ON); The National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON); Olga Korper Gallery (Toronto, ON); Art Gallery of Calgary (Calgary, AB); McMaster Museum of Art (Hamilton, ON); Hamilton Artist’s Inc. (Hamilton, ON). She has recently received a Canada Council Project Grant, is a three-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award and was awarded a SSHRC Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship. In 2013 and 2014 Carvalho was shortlisted for the RBC Canadian Painting Competition. She currently lives and works in Toronto, ON.

Rob Nicholls lives and works in Toronto, where he also teaches in the Drawing and Painting department at Ontario College of Art and Design (OCADU). He received his Masters in Fine Art from the University of Waterloo. He is a recent recipient of the Toronto Arts Council and Ontario Arts Council Emerging Artist grants. In recent pedagogical and studio practice Nicholls has explored the relationship between sound, music and visual art. He has shown his work across Canada including Art Mur in Montreal, Edward Day Gallery in Toronto, and Elliot Louis Gallery in Vancouver.

Sarah Sands Phillips has an interdisciplinary practice encompassing painting, sculpture, photography, and experimental film. She received a BFA from Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, with majors in studio art and art history. Sands Phillips has exhibited locally (General Hardware Contemporary, Gallery 44: Centre for Contemporary Photography, Videofag, DNA Artspace, Art Toronto); nationally (The Dayroom, NL) and in the USA (Mulherin New York, NY). She is the recipient of multiple awards from the Toronto and Ontario arts councils and her work is in the collection of TD Bank Group. She will soon be published by Swimmers Group Productions. She lives in Toronto.