The Thomas Bouckley Collection exhibitions typically include images that depict the exterior facades of historic buildings. This is with good reason; looking at the outside of a building is important for the local historic record. It also helps us to draw a mental map of how Oshawa used to appear. The focus is usually on ‘where’ people lived, worked, visited, and not often on ‘how’ they lived. But interior views can be much more revealing when it comes to social history.

The collection of images in this exhibition offers a more transparent view into the private spaces of Oshawa’s past residents. These interiors provide a glimpse into domestic life and working conditions, and offer a human connection to the spaces. Some of the photographs show private spaces within homes, others show stores or factories, but all of them make us think more about the occupants and purpose of the space, rather than where the building was located and what it architecturally looked like. What can these interior views reveal about their past occupants?

In the fall of 1955, Painters Eleven member Jock Macdonald wrote to a friend that he had recently moved to a first floor apartment at 4 Maple Avenue in Toronto. Here he would meet young art dealer Av Isaacs, who lived on the second floor of the house, and artist Michael J. Kuczer, who lived on the third floor. Kuczer and Macdonald would spend time together for the next five years, until the latter’s death in 1960, discussing each other’s painting and arguing about art. The influence that the men had on each other’s work is obvious.

Born in Winnipeg in 1910, Kuczer began to both paint and play the violin at the young age of seven, and as a high school student, enrolled in the Winnipeg School of Art where he was taught by LeMoine Fitzgerald. Of his meeting with Fitzgerald, he would state: “[he] led me into the world of art as none other could possibly have done.”

Despite receiving a scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago, Kuczer would pursue his music studies, also with a scholarship, at the Royal College of Music in London. During the twenty-year period that he lived in England he always painted, mostly landscapes, portraits and nudes, until taking a drawing course at St. John’s Wood School of Art where one of his fellow students introduced him to abstract art. Kuczer returned to Canada in 1949 and taught music and painting. The friendship he formed with Macdonald a few years later was, as he writes: “stimulating and in turn affected my work.”

The paintings in this exhibition, completed between 1955 and 1965, use a rich and varied palette and often, a central element. These lyrically abstract works were a move away from the artist’s earlier, more cubist abstract works and a subtle move towards the hard edge paintings that would occupy him until his death in 1975.

Of his work as a painter, Michael Kuczer said: “My greatest desire is to express as well as possible the inspiration that first prompts a painting.”

We thank Marilyn Westlake for her generosity in lending us the work in this exhibition.

 

The Canadian Group of Painters (CGP) began as a collective of twenty-eight artists from across Canada. Formed in 1933 as a direct outgrowth of the Group of Seven, the CGP was the first group to aspire to cross-country representation of modern artists. The group was intentionally diverse; it included women, who made up almost one-third of the membership. Indeed it was Isabel McLaughlin, life-long patron of the RMG, who was elected the first non-Group of Seven (and first female) president in 1939, a position she held for more than six years.

CGP exhibitions travelled across Canada and the US, often raising debate and controversy on the state of art and culture in Canada. The subject matter had great variety, and included figurative works, landscapes, abstraction, and realism. What made the group such a vital force was its engagement with modern life—in subject matter, artistic approach and social activity—against the background of the Depression, World War II and postwar reconstruction.

The CGP brought together many of Canada’s most recognized artists such as B.C. Binning, Jack Bush, Emily Carr, Charles Comfort, Paraskeva Clark, Prudence Heward, Yvonne McKague Housser, Jock Macdonald, Pegi Nicol MacLeod, and Isabel McLaughlin, among others, who showcased powerful works of art for a national audience. The works presented in A Vital Force: The Canadian Group of Painters are from the group’s first twenty years of exhibitions, from 1933 to 1953. This is the first major touring exhibition to focus exclusively on the CGP by bringing together significant paintings from public and private collections across Canada.

This exhibition is organized and circulated by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, in partnership with The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, and Queen’s University Archives, with the generous support of the Museums Assistance Program, Department of Canadian Heritage.

In the digital age, the debate about viewing artworks online versus in person has many sides. Crowdsourced projects like Community Curates give voice to both— the accessibility of online collections, as well as the pleasure of seeing the works
in person in the resulting exhibition.

Over the summer, we launched our second crowdsourced exhibition project Community Curates II. We divided the online survey into categories: landscape, portrait, prints, abstract, still life, and photography. An art curator must remain as objective as possible, so the categories ensured that results would reflect the vast diversity of our collection and also challenge participants to consider work they might not have immediately chosen. This was particularly effective in the abstract category. Comments made it clear that while many participants appreciate abstract art, it is still challenging for others. For example, some of the posted comments include:

“both of my choices are for the same reason, they bring an instant feeling of what the artist is trying to convey, clearly.”

“I’m not very keen on abstract art…”

“I really like the Alexandra Luke, “Design for a Plate” 1948 because it looks like a picture of the world”

The Community Curates II exhibition ranges from work by historical artist Paul Peel to contemporary work by David Bierk. It reflects our community’s desire to engage with the RMG collection in new ways. It demonstrates that there are definite benefits to making art more accessible online—with our hope ultimately being to encourage people to visit the gallery to see art in person.

 

On the 18th of June 1812, the United States of America declared war on the British North American colonies in what is today Central and Eastern Canada. The war raged between 1812-1815, and was a defining moment in Canada’s history as a nation. Had the American invasion been successful, Canada would not exist as we know it today.

The war had national and international  significance, and also greatly impacted smaller communities. Though Durham Region saw no military action, the lives of the people who ultimately settled here were acutely affected.

The founders and leaders of the townships of Pickering, Whitby, Oshawa and Darlington (now known as Bowmanville), were  veterans of the War of 1812. One such veteran, Thomas Henry, was an Oshawa founder and influential reverend. In Memoirs of Rev. Thomas Henry, the author attributes Rev. Henry’s war experience to developing the “integrity, energy, perseverance and economy that characterized his afterlife.”

This exhibition explores the individuals, such as Peter Matthews (Pickering), Jabez Lynde (Whitby), John Kerr (Oshawa), and John C. Trull (Darlington) who rose to positions of leadership in Durham Region, bringing their experiences in the war with them. It tells the stories of those who contributed both to the War of 1812, as well as to the growth and success of this community.

Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins have practiced art together since 2000. The work that has emerged through this partnership includes kinetic sculpture, installation, painting, and multidisciplinary art. It is collaborative in more than one sense—it does combine the expected artistic act of the duo working together, however it also addresses narrative overtones such as being conniving conspirators, or a confrontation between opposing views. The resulting work is a series of  encounters, questions, and examinations of contemporary art and culture.

Their work has been described as accessible, engaging, and free of pretense, yet still it can be considered complex in concept. In one example, Pavilion of the Blind, the visitor confronts an energetic sculpture that is at once an imposing architectural structure and a playful abstract composition. As the blinds move and reconfigure, a colourful array of panels congregate into different formations. An underlying question is a theoretical examination of what constitutes a contemporary artwork, and this is reinforced by the paintings also included in the exhibition.

Politics, pop culture, the avant garde, and modernism, are all referenced in this refreshing and playful exhibition.

The works in Making Methods focus on concepts of repetition, detail, and labour as a means of production. They arise in an era when rapid digital and non-physical experiences are commonplace. In this exhibition, art by three emerging Toronto-based artists demonstrate a deliberate engagement with the physical, through material. This modernization of craft-based processes, could indicate an increased focus on hand-rendered art.

Although each of the artist’s work is steeped in process, it is not, however, the process alone that makes their work compelling. Becky Ip’s video To cry (of birds) draws on her family history. The artist’s meticulous research, followed by graphite drawings, which are then translated to paintings on mylar and recorded to experimental film, create a final work that is a dream-like and very personal portrait of the artist’s family history. Accompanying the film is a paper sculpture installation, each piece intuitively cut and folded.

Mark Stebbins’ paintings deal in the art of the error—the glitch—and reference computer games or data. His meticulous process is a manipulation of material, which includes paint and ink, allowing us to draw comparison to textiles
such as knitting and embroidery. The result is works of incredible detail and colourful pattern that celebrate error by purposely producing glitches–something referred to as glitch-alikes.

Sam Mogelonsky’s sculptures are experiments in material and labour, each made with disarmingly excessive method. In one example, the artist works with sequins, sewing pins, and a document tube, creating an object that at first glance is smooth and soothing, but upon closer inspection reveals an interior that is sharp, overlapping, and dangerous. Mogelonsky re-presents the sculptures in a series of photographs of their interiors to hallucinogenic effect.

Though this exhibition reveals the “type” of process by which each artist produces their work, the significance of their practices is revealed through the artists’ individual sensibility and intent.

 

In 2008 guest curator Micah Donovan travelled to Nova Scotia, and at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, saw photographs of Bell’s experimental kites. In contemplating the connections between inventing new shapes for kiting, and allowing the imagination to dream up new concepts of communication, a curatorial question emerged; “When we play, what does the world reveal to us that is otherwise invisible?” 

Drift is the exhibition that has resulted from this thought process about experimentation. Humans, though unable to fully comprehend the world they inhabit, certainly find their way. This idea of not-knowing is central in the art-making process, as it is so often in the accidental discovery that the most inventive art emerges.

In the creative process, the ability to engage with the unknown—results of experiments, discovery of new materials, accidents, or drifting away from original intent—is a powerful tool that translates in resulting work. The projects in this exhibition offer a glimpse of differing strategies that move within the unknown. This exhibition includes the aforementioned photographs of Alexander Graham Bell from the collection of the Government of Canada, as well as video works by Callum Cooper, Klara Hobza, and Kristan Horton, and sculpture by Marc Ganzglass, and Christof Migone.

Read the Catalogue!

Seeing “Then and Now” images side by side puts into perspective just how much Oshawa has changed in the last 100 years. Once again, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery teamed up with the Oshawa Senior Citizens’ Camera Club to examine the evolution of Oshawa—this time focusing on the Four Corners. Using historical images from the Thomas Bouckley Collection as a starting point, members of the club photographed the Four Corners as it appears today.

The intersection of King and Simcoe Streets, known as “The Four Corners”, has always been the undisputed center of Oshawa. From its humble beginnings as a small settlement community to becoming the 14^th largest metropolitan area in Canada, Oshawa grew out of the Four Corners to become what it is today. As Oshawa branched out, expanding and growing on all sides, the heart of the downtown remained the Four Corners. The Thomas Bouckley Collection and Oshawa Seniors’ Camera Club’s photos show the transition of the downtown, and the revitalization it is currently undergoing.