The Oshawa Art Association Juried Show is an annual exhibition of local art. The exhibition is held 11 September – 28 September with an opening reception on Thursday 11 September at 7pm. Visit www.oshawaartassociation.com for information.

Congratulations to the winners!

GOLD MEDAL
Robert Graham, Breakfast in Sauble

SILVER MEDAL
Thomas Given, Woman on Stairs

BRONZE MEDAL
Hi-Sook Barker, Sunday Morning

FOUNDER’S AWARD
Robert Graham

BEST in IMAGINATIVE ABSTRACT
Betsy Miller, Sake

BEST in SCULPTURE
Susan Lindo, Girl With Unshaven Legs

BEST in FAVOURITE SUBJECT
Diane Huson, Water Lilies

BEST in LANDSCAPES/SEASCAPES/CITYSCAPES
Allan O’Marra, Roots Reflections

BEST in WILDLIFE/ANIMALS/BIRDS
Alexandra Troop, Ink Dog

BEST in PEOPLE/FIGURES
Joan Moss, Colin

BEST in DERIVATIVE ABSTRACT
Marissa Sweet, Typhoon Haiyan

In the third instalment of the Then and Now project, which is in partnership with the Oshawa Senior Citizens’ Camera Club, three subjects are explored: civic buildings, schools and churches. While these may seem like three entirely separate components, civic centers, schools and places of worship are among the first to be established in the formation of new communities. With these institutions in mind and using images from the Thomas Bouckley Collection as a starting point, the Oshawa Senior Citizens’ Camera Club have photographed these thematic locations as they appear today, with a focus on the downtown core of Oshawa.

The early settlers of Oshawa concentrated their efforts on establishing these important institutions. At one point in Oshawa’s history, churches existed on almost every corner of the downtown. While today places of worship of all faiths are located throughout Oshawa, in this exhibition the earliest existing churches in its downtown are explored. Educationally, one-room schoolhouses were the norm, but over time, larger schools increased in number and opened to accommodate the growing population. This constant growth is also reflected in the various locations used by Oshawa’s council and government bodies since its early days as a Village to the present.

A big thank you to the Oshawa Senior Citizens’ Camera Club for once again telling the continuing story of Oshawa in their exploration of yesterday and today.

Escapism is a commonly depicted theme in art history, in the form of a pastime or means of entertainment that diverts the mind from daily struggles. Ranging from frescos of erotic brothel scenes found in the ancient ruins of Pompeii (prior to 79 AD), to Impressionist paintings of the opera (19th Century), artists have continuously felt the need to represent enjoyable activities. These events provide a temporary shift from day-to-day worries to amusements that offer a pleasurable alternative. While art can be seen as a form of escapism, it can also be used to delve into a multitude of channels granting us admission into different worlds or alternate times and places.

This exhibition brings together works from the RMG’s permanent collection that share this common theme. They include representations of theatre, concerts, carnivals and rodeos, as well as the audience who frequent these events. Each work offers the opportunity to experience the events through the artist’s eyes; yet there is no question that we, as viewers, are denied the full sensory experience which comes with attending these events first hand. We cannot hear melodies, smell perfumes, feel temperatures, or taste food. While these absences may seem like a disadvantage to the goal of escapism, it is quite the opposite.

The gallery offers us the ideal venue to absorb these works, shifting our mind away from our day-to-day thoughts and centering our attention on the art before us. With our concerns behind us, we are free to dive into the timeless moments portrayed in the artworks. The Art of Escapism features works that present us with the opportunity to break free from routine and briefly escape into a variety of delightful distractions.

 

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is dedicated to supporting the development of emerging artists in Durham Region. Since 2001, a biannual exhibition introduces the community to emerging artists who were both born and raised or currently reside in the Durham Region, and provides them with the opportunity for recognition by their regional gallery and advancement in their careers. Interestingly, when bringing together three very different artists who share only a geographic affinity, an artistic discourse begins to take shape. Moriarity, Berube and Latimer represent a wide range of artistic practice: Moriarity is a painter, Berube a photographer, and Latimer an experimental film artist.

Marshall McLuhan believed that ‘the medium is the message’- that is to say that the medium is just as important to study as the content, since the characteristics of a medium can greatly affect the understanding of the message it carries. This is the case for all three artists whose chosen devices carry as much weight as the message itself. Through their practice, they strive to merge realities to create something new, whether through a screen, lens or frame.

While Moriarty, Berube and Latimer are influenced by technical devices (internet, cameras, film equipment), each of them, in the end, returns to traditional practice: painting, the dark room, and antiquated film equipment. Their works come together by way of a series of viewfinders – Moriarity uses the internet as an onlooker, Berube uses the camera lens as a bystander, and Latimer uses film equipment to comment on the evolution of technology. In their attempts to make connections with the world and technology, the emphasis is placed on their chosen mediums to bring meaning and understanding to their works.

Repurposing is the act of altering something so it takes on a new function. For many, repurposing is not just a preference, but also a necessary act of survival. While evolutionists may argue that the ability to adapt is central to the survival of a species, repurposing creates space to redefine reality.

There are subtle yet important differences between the terms adapt and re-purpose. The word adapt has many meanings, and within certain discourse, it is often associated with adjustments intended to make a more inclusive world. For example, we may modify a workstation to become wheelchair accessible; hiring practices are adjusted to respond to employment inequity and to encourage greater diversity in the work place. Adapting does not require major systemic change and rarely does it result in redistribution of privilege or empowerment. To adapt is to assume that the status quo should be accepted as is. Society however, presents an onslaught of misdistributions of power and inequality, and for the artists presented in this exhibition, the notion of simply conforming to this reality presents a gross failure of imagination. Instead, they repurpose.

This interactive group exhibition focuses on artists who repurpose and reclaim objects and ideas within their practice, and in doing so present new ways of seeing and understanding the world. Artists include Spanish artist Coco Riot, Jan Derbyshire, Cait Davis, Stephen Fakiyesi, Maria Hupfield and a collaborative video work by Jason Tschantré and the late Lisa Bufano.

In automobiles, the passenger side mirror warns that objects in mirror may be closer than they appear. What it’s saying is that what we think we see is not necessarily accurate— what’s actually there is closer than it looks, a shrinking of reality.

Art is not always what we initially think it is. A photograph of a landscape is actually a pure invention; a painting of a QR code hides its message in the digital stratosphere, and an abstract painting has, as its starting point, an object in the real world. When speaking of his series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral, Monet noted that his subject was not a view of the cathedral but was the act of seeing that view. While car manufacturers must warn drivers that what theythink they see in a mirror is not how the object actuallyshould be viewed and understood, art acts differently. There is no right or wrong way of looking at art, although the more one looks, the more one sees. As the art historian Kenneth Clark notes “looking at pictures requires active participation.”

Works in this exhibition come from the RMG’s expansive permanent collection and focus on the intimate view—the one that insists that we look again in order to see what’s there. Is the distorted figure an actual human, and how does our brain process Op Art? What we’re seeing is not only the objects more closely, but those objects often in ways that we’re not used to seeing them: enlarged, close and cropped views or completely out of our daily context. The RMG collection, which began with a gift of 37 works, now numbers over 4000 and includes paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures, drawings and installation work. This exhibition includes recent acquisitions that continue to shape the collection and reflect, as the mandate states, a dedication to share, explore and engage with our communities through the continuing story of modern and contemporary Canadian art.

 

The concept of individual worth as represented by personal possessions is not new. Over the last century, consumerism has experienced a series of mutations following the Industrial Revolution and the Second World War, spawning our current consumer culture. With an increasing appetite for material ‘things’, the invention and manufacture of goods has exponentially grown with global implications. This is the underlying theme of Ian Johnston: Reinventing Consumption.

Johnston’s work addresses three issues: the invention of material objects due to increasing demand, the manufacturing process, and the accumulation of material goods. Several international artistic residencies sparked Johnston’s observation of the similarities, rather than the differences, of consumer behaviour across cultures. Everyday household items are brought to life in Antechamber which includes hundreds of ceramic elements using a vacuum forming technique perfected by Johnston over a number of years. Johnston’s sculptural pieces translate as architectural structures. The Chamber references the artistic process in the form of an inflating nylon bag concealing, and yet revealing found objects underneath. Finally, The Inventor’s Roomis a curatorial display of the tools involved in the creative process.

A thought-provoking commentary on a consumer-driven society, Reinventing Consumption reflects the nature and evolution of our relationship to the material world.

RBC sponsors an exhibition each year for the winner of the Best Overall Submission during the RMG’s annual fundraiser, RMG Exposed. The purpose of this prize is to raise awareness of contemporary photographers and their work. At last fall’s event, Toronto-based photographer Jonathan Groeneweg’s Bleecker Street Co-op Garden took the top award.

Roots in the Garden is a continuation of Groeneweg’s Nature of Urbanity series, which included Groeneweg’s winning photo. That larger body of work was a product of academic research and artistic creation, which led to a Masters of Fine Arts degree at Ryerson University in Documentary Media, a thesis revolving around the important discussion of nature as a product of culture.

Addressing historic and contemporary issues within the discourses of landscape, philosophy, and urban development, Groeneweg creates aerial photo-panoramic composites of urban vegetable gardens. He explores relationships by contrasting mathematical precision and control of constructed space with the organic chaos of foliage and greenery. The vegetable garden is one of our oldest cultural constructs and has come to reflect many of our most cherished human ideals. It combines our rational desire for scientific control with the spiritual process in which we are deeply rooted. The garden is the starting point for the story of humanity’s migration from the wilderness towards the development of civilization in its current state, as well as a focus on things outside of primarily meeting the necessities of life.

The photographs in this series combine digital photographic prints of the Leslie Street Allotment Gardens in Toronto and traditional print embossing techniques to introduce the anomalous human form. This combination creates a subtle interplay between the form of the garden, its maker, and the veil of ‘nature’ surrounding it.

We are grateful to RBC Dominion Securities for sponsoring this exhibition.

Kim Ondaatje is an artist, filmmaker, and cultural advocate whose diverse efforts have greatly impacted the lives of artists in Canada. This retrospective exhibition includes selections from over twenty-five public and private collections across Canada and offers a comprehensive survey of Ondaatje’s career.

Ondaatje’s exploration of painting became a full-time effort by the mid 1960’s following her studies at the Ontario College of Art, McGill University, and Queen’s University. Included in this exhibition are three distinct cycles of work: her earliest forays into minimalist, often abstracted, yet bold landscape imagery; a later, pared-down, subtly toned collection of interior scenes known as The House on Picadilly Street series; and a group of industrial images known as the Factory series. A film from the Factory series is also included.

Over time, Ondaatje’s painting evolved from a conventional style through more formalist abstraction and representational work, investigating place and space. From the landscapes of her early work, through the interiors, and later the factory scenes, Ondaatje’s paintings reveal an artist interested in investigating her surroundings, which in turn helped to widen the scope of the Canadian landscape tradition.

In 2009, together with Tony Urquhart, Kim Ondaatje received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art for Outstanding Contribution for their role (with the late Jack Chambers) in establishing the nonprofit association promoting artists’ rights, Canadian Artist’s Representation (CARFAC).

Ondaatje’s art has been shown in Canada and internationally from the 1960s to the present. This was organized by Museum London with support from the Museums Assistance Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

From the mid-eighteenth to the late nineteenth century, prints were the only means of dispersing images of Canada. Because they could be captured and produced in significant numbers, the prints satisfied a population eager for scenes of a land of adventure, of critical military encounters, and of settlements that foretold peace and a prosperous future.

Artists obliged the demand for images that appealed to dreams and ambitions of those who would venture through Canada and those who called it home. At times wild and powerful, and sometimes inaccurate, artists created images that appealed to the temperament of the times.

The works in this exhibition are sourced exclusively from the EY Art Collection, one of the largest collections of original prints in private hands in Canada. Never before exhibited to the general public, these images cover a span of over one hundred years and include images of major events, exotic locales, and important individuals.

Capturing Canada provides an opportunity to see almost one hundred of these prints. An important part of the corporate art collection of EY, these works are being shown in 2014 as EY celebrates its 150th anniversary. Through dynamic images of Niagara Falls, our vast Arctic territories, major Canadian cities, and the building of the railway, Capturing Canada demonstrates the legacy of EY’s contribution to the history of both Canada and its art.