Opening reception: Friday, May 5, 7-1opm

This exhibition brings together five Ontario-based artists who engage with various photographic processes to investigate the social histories of land, architecture and institutions. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the RMG, the gallery invited each artist to produce a new project that grapples with the shifting nature of Oshawa’s social, economic and technological fabric.

Drawing from accounts of Oshawa that range from its under-acknowledged history as a site of Indigenous occupation to the inescapable dominance of the 20th century auto industry, from explorations of familial archives to representations of institutional tech hubs, this exhibition weaves together narratives of Oshawa that offer a distinct view of the city, one produced by its visitors and its residents alike.

This exhibition celebrates The Robert McLaughlin Gallery’s 50th anniversary through the exploration of abstraction in Canadian art.

While the heroes of Canadian abstraction date back to the 1920s, the work of young contemporary abstract artists continues to be a vital part of Canada’s national identity and a source of celebration. We are, ultimately, our history, and that history includes the arts and important figures who produced abstract work across the country. Formerly  considered “rebels” for resisting traditional forms of art, artists whose work is abstract are now part of an ongoing tradition.

The trajectory of Canadian abstraction includes what Roald Nasgaard refers to as the “heroic generation”—the Automatistes, Painters Eleven—those mid-century modernists to whom we gravitate when thoughts of Canadian abstraction arise. But the history of Canadian abstraction is more than just groups or individual names. It encompasses the spirit of the decades through which it passed and, as such, proves to celebrate where we’ve come from and who we want to be in the 21st century.

The RMG is uniquely positioned to tell the continuing story of abstraction in Canada. A collection which began with a gift from Painters Eleven artist Alexandra Luke and which represents one of each of the members of Painters Eleven (P11), has grown to 2000 works. From that gift, the gallery’s first mandate from 1970 was directed towards collecting and exhibiting works by P11, and those across Canada that they had influenced. The gallery has deliberately worked to expand its collection of Canadian abstract works and have early works from the 1920s into the 21^st century. This exhibition is an overview of close to 100 years of Canadian abstraction.

Opening reception: April 6, 7-10pm

This year, the Oshawa Art Association is celebrating its 50th anniversary! In 1967 two aspiring artists, Audrey MacLean and Maureen Remington, formed the OAA and organized its first Annual Juried Exhibition.

Now in its 49th year, the juried exhibition continues to celebrate the artistic contributions of Oshawa artists, and reflects on the history of our community.

 

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.