“This residency is a multifaceted, aesthetic research project into the work and life of Jock Macdonald. In this sense, it will function as a postscript: a sprawling, artistic labyrinth of additional information and my idiosyncratic response to the concurrently held exhibition, Jock Macdonald: Evolving Form at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery from 3 February to 24 May, 2015.” – Pete Smith

Pete Smith is an artist, critic and sometimes curator based in Southern Ontario. He has exhibited his work extensively since completing his BFA from York University in 1998 and his MFA from the University of Guelph in 2007. Recent solo exhibitions include: Blind Carbon Copy at P | M Gallery in Toronto (2012), New Drawings at Colorida Gallery in Lisbon (2012), Newspaper Drawings at Joan Ferneyhough Contemporary in North Bay, Ontario (2010) and Proverbs for Paranoids at Elissa Cristall Gallery in Vancouver (2009). Smith has given public presentations on the state of contemporary painting as well as on his own work at The University of Western Ontario (2009), OCAD University (2007), The University Art Association of Canada Conference (2007) and the University of the Fraser Valley (2008). His writings on art have appeared in Canadian Art and Border Crossings magazines. He has held teaching positions at The University of Guelph, The University of Western Ontario and The University of Toronto. Currently, he is a lecturer in the Drawing and Painting Department at OCAD University. For more information, visit http://www.petesmith.ca.

Read more about Pete Smith’s project
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The annual student exhibition returns with works from students from the Durham Catholic District School Board.

Jock Macdonald: Evolving Form is a travelling exhibition, organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery and celebrating the artist’s life and exhibiting many previously unknown works. The exhibition begins with Macdonald’s early painting career in Vancouver, surveys his move toward abstraction and his extraordinary automatics, and concludes with the later abstractions he produced as part of the Toronto-based collective of abstract artists, the Painters Eleven.

A pioneer of postwar abstraction in Canada, Jock Macdonald was a key figure and influenced not only his peers, but also future generations of Canadian painters. The exhibition traces the artist’s practice and shows the dramatic transformations he underwent throughout his development. Influenced by spirituality and Surrealist thinking, Macdonald believed that the artist’s task was to “break out of the tangible reality of daily existence to realize the highest planes of art expression”. (Pg 15, Thom, The Early Work: An Artist Emerges) His career was an artistic journey in a perpetual state of evolution and growth. As a founding member of Painters Eleven, Macdonald’s contribution to abstract painting in Canada is seminal.

Evolving Form is the first major retrospective of the artist’s work in over thirty years and is a fresh look at the influential artist’s career.

A special project website detailing the artist’s life with an interactive timeline, drawing tool and gallery of artworks accompanies the exhibition. Click here to launch jockmacdonald.org

This project is accompanied by a major book co-published by the three art galleries and Black Dog Publishing, featuring texts by each curator, an essay by scholar Dr. Anna Hudson, excerpts from Macdonald’s correspondence and a diary the artist kept while living in Nootka Sound from 1935 to 1936.

The exhibition is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and is curated by Ian M. Thom, Michelle Jacques and Linda Jansma.

This exhibition is generously supported by the Government of Canada through the Museums Assistance Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Local artist Margaret Rodgers has created a new body of work as an extension of her ongoing interest in Oshawa’s heritage.  Using photographs from the Thomas Bouckley Collection as a jumping off point, Rodgers has created a series of mixed media works that ask the viewer to take a closer look at scenes from Oshawa’s history. 

Rodgers places a spotlight on captured moments of figures that are otherwise easily overlooked in these photographs. The act of featuring these people in her work is a subversion of the original intent of the photographer, but allows the viewer to look at the image in a new way.  Rodgers deals with incidental images, often grainy or blurry, but those that are suggestive of daily life at the time. Most of the mixed media work centers on bystanders from various historical Oshawa events, calling up the manner in which we all become background strangers captured in other people’s photographs at one time or another. The works featured in Closeups are displayed using recovered jewelry trays from the basement at 20 Simcoe Street North, a building formerly owned by Burns Jewellers and further referencing Oshawa’s past. 

Margaret Rodgers is an Oshawa-based artist who has exhibited internationally and locally for many years. She founded the IRIS Group, a women artists’ collective, in 1996, taught art subjects at Centennial and Durham Colleges, and spearheaded many projects as Director/Curator at VAC Clarington.

 

Throughout most of Canada’s history, the navigation of the landscape by foot, wagon, or canoe, whether for the sake of discovery, trade, or pleasure, proceeded at much slower speeds than it does now. Paved roads have replaced the trails of those earlier days, although they cross the same hills, marshes, and forests, and their routes follow the same rivers and valleys. Today, our encounters with vistas and wildlife often occur from within the metal and glass armour of an automobile while travelling at 100 kilometres per hour.

In his Futurist Manifesto of 1909, the Italian Filippo Tommaso Marinetti declared that man’s triumphs over nature would lead the way to a better future, and called for the overthrow of all that was old! Just a year earlier, Henry Ford’s Model T had hit the streets of America, signalling the dawn of the motor age when industrial proliferation would radically transform lives by providing access to new kinds of convenience and independence.

Our mass love affair with the car had hit full stride by the middle of the last century, and despite a few bumps and hurdles, it has remained intact to this day. Auto bodies and road trips have been evoked in countless images, narratives, and songs, from Hollywood movies to devoted sections of newspapers. However, over time this near-utopian relationship has come under intense scrutiny from a wide range of cultural and environmental perspectives.

Running on Empty presents the work of artists who consider the seductions, and also disillusionments, in our longstanding infatuation with the car and highway. They situate the car as a mediating force in our relationship with mobility and the land, and explore the interconnection of industry and the natural world. In these delightful and challenging works of art expeditions have unexpected consequences, bucolic scenes become a blur, idyllic scenarios are mere fabrications, and history repeats itself.

Running on Empty is curated by artist Heather Nicol. A full color, 48 page catalogue with an essay by Heather Nicol will accompany the exhibition.

As the history of art has changed, so too has the depiction of the figure. From the Woman of Willendorf (formally referred to as the Venus of Willendorf), a sculpture carved over 30,000 years ago, to line drawings of figures found in caves and on rock formations around the world; Greek and Roman statuary; painted, sculpted and photographed portraits, the figure has been both a central and enduring theme in artistic practices.

In North America, figures were often included in early topographical drawings, prints and watercolours to animate a landscape, as well as provide a sense of scale or information about period dress, cultural activity or the social status of the person who commissioned the work. In landscape work included in Go Figure, the scene often takes priority over the figure with the landscape referencing the “sublime” that expresses humanity’s awe in the face of nature’s majesty—indeed, the often diminutive size of the figure serves to enhance the setting in which it is placed. Later, the figure would once again become more central to the artist during the rise of genre painting in the nineteenth century.

Working directly from the model is standard practice in the training of artists. An artist, however, might work not only from the nude figure, but also from photographs, skeletons and anatomical subjects, as well as draped figures. The depiction of, primarily, female nudes in the history of Western art brings numerous issues to the fore including the male gaze and objectification, as well as feminism and cultural politics.

A portrait not only represents the physical aspect of the subject, but also their essence. From formal, historical portraits of the upper class, to the graphite sketch that quickly gives not only the physical characteristics, but a sense of the sitter’s personality, the portrait can portray both a sense of “occasion,” as well as an intimate connection between artist and subject.

The work presented in Go Figure is from the permanent collection of The Robert McLaughlin Gallery. The collection is comprised of over 4500 paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculpture, and installations that originated with the generous donation of 37 works from the collection of artist Alexandra Luke. The RMG holdings include both historic and contemporary images of the figure, from quick studies on paper to highly finished canvases. The collection is continuously evolving, and Go Figure includes recent acquisitions that exemplify the RMG’s dedication to sharing, exploring and engaging with our communities through the continuing story of modern and contemporary Canadian art.

Influential artist and educator Ron Shuebrook is best known as an abstract painter who aligns his work with American late Modernist tendencies. In Shuebrook’s work, “late Modernism” means adherence to the principles of formalist aesthetics, compositional refinement and exploration of the properties of his materials. For this artist there is no practical distinction to be made between drawing and painting: as he notes “drawing and painting are both about working with a certain material.”

Shuebrook’s career spans almost half a century of distinguished creative practice. He has influenced nearly two generations of important Canadian artists, while remaining steadfastly committed to a deeply held set of Modernist and humanistic values. Historically, exhibitions and critical discussions of his work have tended to concentrate on his paintings and often overlook or even dismiss an equally notable drawing practice, viewing this significant body of work as tangential to the larger critical and aesthetic trajectory. Drawing has much to teach viewers about process. The geometric figures in black compressed charcoal interlock in dynamic tension, generating graphic elegance from the visibly erased and reworked remnants of false starts and new decisions. This exhibition seeks to problematize this traditional reading of Shuebrook’s practice by asserting the centrality and continued influence of his drawing to contemporary artists today.

As Shuebrook states, “I am still pulled to drawing’s fundamental nature… it is essential, fundamental and basic.” Representing over 30 years of production by the artist, this is the first retrospective survey of drawings by Ron Shuebrook.

With a population of approximately eight million people, Canada, during World War I, managed to raise an army of 600,000, a navy of 9,600, send over 20,000 men to serve in the British Royal Flying Corps and over 3,000 nurses with the medical corps. There were approximately 60,000 Canadian military casualties and close to 150,000 wounded from 1914-1918.

Propaganda posters played their own role during the Great War. A relatively inexpensive means of mass communication, posters were primarily used to promote enlistment in the forces, raise funds through Victory Bonds, encourage the population against waste, and increase industrial and agricultural production. The tone of early posters was almost festive, as the Allies assumed the war would be over quickly. The images were often naïve and word heavy, appealing to the pride of the young men they were targeting. However, as the war continued and the list of casualties grew, the tone of the posters began to change—the need for new recruits was urgent.

The Wildman collection of war posters was initially a secondary collection: around 1998 Christine and Craig Wildman, both history enthusiasts, decided to augment a collection of rare ephemera with related war posters. The poster collection now numbers over 100, and encompasses posters from both Allied and Central Power countries. We are grateful to the Wildmans for sharing their passion as part of RMG’s commemoration of the beginning of the Great War.

 

Reading the Talk presents contemporary artists Michael Belmore, Hannah Claus, Patricia Deadman, Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Keesic Douglas and Melissa General engaging through art in critical conversations about relationship to lands, region and territory, while considering distinct indigenous perspectives on the history of treaties in this land now referred to as Canada.

After learning about the Dish with One Spoon Treaty and wampum from artist Bonnie Devine and Elder Jan Longboat, the curators, Rachelle Dickenson and Lisa Myers invited artists who address land, trade, treaty and wampum in their work to consider this specific dish treaty.

As the Anishnaabe and Haudenosaunee Nations negotiated the Dish with One Spoon Treaty to share hunting grounds in regions south and north of the Great Lakes in the 17th through to the 19th century, historian and activist Leanne Simpson describes this diplomacy as a way for two nations to share territory and at the same time maintain independence. Wampum belt, a belt-like object weaved together with two kinds of beads made from Quahog and Whelk shells, is symbolic in bead count, colour and design. Wampum functions as a mnemonic device for leaders to ‘read the talk’ of agreements that are established and renewed between nations. Drawing from this rich history, Reading the Talk elucidates the continuing role of the wampum for Indigenous peoples and takes into consideration the Dish with One Spoon Treaty.

Through a deep engagement of materials, technique and narrative, the installation, sculpture, video and photography in this exhibition contribute to a conversation about the different relationships to land and the ways that land is valued.

Chi Miigwech, Nya:weh and Thank You to the knowledge and guidance shared by Tuscarora artist, writer, curator Rick Hill, Anishinaabe Ojibwa artist, curator, writer and educator Bonnie Devine and Anishinaabe Ojibwe historian, writer, educator Alan Corbiere.

Read the catalogue!

When Canada entered the Great War on August 4, 1914, the lives of Canadians across the country were changed forever. For the men who fought on the frontlines and the families that supported them from the home front, WWI was unlike anything Canadians had experienced. Canada’s contribution to the war led to growing autonomy and independence for the nation, but it came at a great price and many Oshawa men lost their lives.

The building of the new Oshawa Armouries was completed in 1914, and by September 1916, men from across Durham Region joined Ontario County’s 116th Battalion. They went on to fight in some of the great battles of the war including Vimy Ridge, Valenciennes and Passchendaele. On the homefront, local businesses worked hard to contribute to the war effort by manufacturing goods to support their family members, friends and neighbours fighting overseas. The Thomas Bouckley Collection’s large number of photographs taken in Oshawa during World War One act as a reminder of the great sacrifice that was made by the Oshawa community.
This exhibition is a part of the WWI Commemorative Project: Oshawa Faithful and Ready. The RMG, the Oshawa Community Museum & Archives, Trent University (Oshawa), Oshawa Public Libraries, Ontario Regiment Museum, Heritage Oshawa, City of Oshawa and Rogers TV have partnered to deliver an ambitious program throughout the year that commemorates the 100th anniversary of the beginning of WWI.