This 8 week class is filled with art making that inspires creativity and imagination! Each week will be a new adventure with sculptures, paintings, drawings, printmaking, and more using artist quality materials!
*Cancellation requests received prior to the start of the program will receive a full refund minus a $15 administration fee. We do not issue refunds (partial or full) after the start of the program.
The RMG reserves the right to cancel programs if the minimum enrollment is not met. In the event of a program cancellation, a full refund will be given. If a program is cancelled, registrants will receive notice one week prior to the beginning of the program.
Transference is a performance by RBC Emerging Artist in Residence Vanessa Godden. Throughout the performance, Godden will submerge their body in containers of different sizes filled with salt water. The artist’s movement, and the resulting sounds, will interact with a sound composition produced in collaboration with Markham-based Visual and Sonic artist, James Knott. The composition includes audio collected by Godden during their residency at the RMG, field recordings from Trinidad and Tobago, experimental steel pan recordings, and a choir of sounds collected from Queer and Trans loved ones. The performance serves as a bridge between Godden’s Non-Binary Queer diasporic existence in the West and the lineages of movement instigated by colonization of South Asia and the Caribbean.
Vanessa Godden, Transference (2024), performed at the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, October 13, 2024. Image by Henry Chan.
The RBC Emerging Artist Residency Program is generously sponsored by the RBC Foundation’s Emerging Artist Project.
The artist thanks the Canada Council for the Arts for their support of this work.
Likkle Acts brings together four series of photographs by Pickering-based artist Christina Leslie. Set in Jamaica, each body of work explores both her familial relationships and the complex history of the Caribbean. Delving into themes of memory, migration, and the sugar industry, Leslie adopts a variety of photographic processes to convey how she views the past and present as interconnected and multifaceted. Framing the exhibition, the Patois title references an African proverb made popular by Bob Marley’s song Small Axe: “If you are the big tree / We are the small axe.” This cumulative power of small gestures is conveyed throughout the exhibition, showing that when small actions are multiplied, they can have a meaningful impact.
In Morant Bay (2018) and St. Thomas, JA (2024), Leslie illustrates how belonging is built and maintained in everyday life through small acts of care, work, and communal rest. Alongside portraits and informal encounters, Leslie captures streetscapes and landscapes in a documentary style. These bodies of work reflect the artist’s impulse to maintain and deepen a connection to place through photography. Distinct from the documentary style of these series, Pinhole Parish (2023-2024) represents the artist’s personal reckoning with memory and the rupture of migration. Constructed using improvised pinhole camera lenses from materials at hand, the soft-hued images are dreamy and out of focus, visualizing the influence of intergenerational storytelling and an intangible veil between the past and present. Adopting a wider perspective, Sugar Coat (2021-2024) considers how collective memory is shaped by presence and absence in historical records and public spaces. Drawing from research on the transatlantic slave trade and the history of the sugar industry, this series presents narrative images that have been painstakingly encased in sugar. In this work, Leslie highlights resistance to colonial oppression, pointing to acts of rebellion big and small.
Christina Leslie is an artist based in Pickering, Ontario. She earned her BFA in 2006 at OCADU in Toronto and her MFA at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, USA in 2022. Her photographs have been featured in numerous publications and exhibited both nationally and internationally. Her latest series “Sugar Coat” has been exhibited virtually on Ain’t Bad Magazine (2021), Featureshoot.com (2022), PetaPixel.com (2022), and in-person at BAND Gallery (2023). She has exhibited nationally and internationally at GAMU (2009), Royal Ontario Museum (2010), Pier 21 (201, Art Gallery of Windsor (2017), Peel Art Gallery Museum and Archives (2020), Prefix ICA (2021), and McMaster Museum of Art (2022). Much of her photographic practice revolves around the themes of de-colonialism, identity, immigration, issues of marginalization, history, memory, race, and her West Indian heritage. She often utilizes text and alternative and historical photographic processes to produce her photographs. She is a member of an all-female photography collective, Silver Water Collective and is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto.
Installation of “Christina Leslie: Likkle Acts” at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2024. Photos by Toni Hafkenscheid.
On Saturday, February 8, 2025, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery hosted an artist talk with Christina Leslie in her exhibition Likkle Acts. In conversation with the exhibition’s curator, Hannah Keating, Leslie shares her experiences creating her work and sharing it with audiences.
Video filmed and edited by Kevin Nunes.
On Saturday, February 8, 2025, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery hosted an artist talk with Christina Leslie in her exhibition Likkle Acts. In conversation with the exhibition’s curator, Hannah Keating, Leslie shares information about her Sugar Coat series.
Video filmed and edited by Kevin Nunes.
Exhibition presented by Partners in Art with additional support from the Ontario Arts Council, Alterna Savings, and Durham Community Foundation.
Help us celebrate the opening of Christina Leslie’s solo exhibition Likkle Acts! This event is free and open to everyone. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Hannah at [email protected]. Christina Leslie is an artist based in Pickering, Ontario. She earned her BFA in 2006 at OCADU in Toronto and her […]
Walk through the exhibition Christina Leslie: Likkle Acts with exhibition curator Hannah Keating. Hannah will explain how the works were made and the stories and ideas that motivated Christina to create them. Curatorial Tours are free and open to everyone. They provide deeper insight into the themes, context, and content of our exhibitions. Seating options […]
Come out to hear Christina Leslie share insights and reflections on Likkle Acts with exhibition curator Hannah Keating. The talk will shine a light on Leslie’s practice, research, and the innovative photographic processes that she used to create the works in Likkle Acts. Join us at 1pm for a reception catered by Starapples. The artist […]
Free. Registration is required. This is a how-to workshop for artists! Part creative workshop, part career conversation, we’re excited to have Christina Leslie lead a two-part session on photo emulsion transfers and gallery representation. Inspired by her Sugar Coat series in Likkle Acts, Leslie will show participants how to lift a photographic image from one […]
Inspired by the themes of mental health in Jack Bush: Breakthrough, we are creating neurographic art. Neurographic art is known to be a self-care artform. This month we are also decorating canvas bags while supplies last!
Suitable for ages 3+
Free admission, no registration required.
This event is generously sponsored by Ontario Power Generation.
The weather is getting cooler, let’s cozy up with some autumnal books.
The Oshawa Library will be joining us for a story time reading at 11AM in the Isabel Gallery Space. Throughout the event, you can get a library card and make a button in our lobby.
Create artwork of your favourite warm beverages in The Lookout, and make bookmarks to use in your newly checked out books in The Studio!
Suitable for ages 3+
Free admission, no registration required.
This event is generously sponsored by Ontario Power Generation.
Help us celebrate the opening of Christina Leslie’s solo exhibition Likkle Acts!
This event is free and open to everyone. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Hannah at [email protected].
Christina Leslie is an artist based in Pickering, Ontario. She earned her BFA in 2006 at OCADU in Toronto and her MFA at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, USA in 2022. Her photographs have been featured in numerous publications and exhibited both nationally and internationally. Her latest series “Sugar Coat” has been exhibited virtually on Ain’t Bad Magazine (2021), Featureshoot.com (2022), PetaPixel.com (2022), and in-person at BAND Gallery (2023). She has exhibited nationally and internationally at GAMU (2009), Royal Ontario Museum (2010), Pier 21 (201, Art Gallery of Windsor (2017), Peel Art Gallery Museum and Archives (2020), Prefix ICA (2021), and McMaster Museum of Art (2022). Much of her photographic practice revolves around the themes of de-colonialism, identity, immigration, issues of marginalization, history, memory, race, and her West Indian heritage. She often utilizes text and alternative and historical photographic processes to produce her photographs. She is a member of an all-female photography collective, Silver Water Collective and is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto.
In celebration of Oshawa’s centenary, the Oshawa Camera Club is proud to present Oshawa100, a photo contest and exhibition featuring images by local amateur photographers.
Please join us to experience the vibrancy and diversity of Oshawa through photographs at the opening reception and prize presentation.
This event is free and open to everyone. For information on our facilities, please click here. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Sonya at [email protected].
Come together to celebrate cultural diversity in Durham Region!
The RMG invites you to attend the opening reception of Unity Through the Arts: Juried Exhibition 2024 presented in partnership with Cultural Expressions for CHANGE Inc.
Several awards will be presented to adults and youth ranging from $100 to $1000. Refreshments will be provided.
This event is free and open to everyone. For information on our facilities, please click here. If there are ways we can support your participation, please contact Sonya at [email protected].
