Christina Leslie: Likkle Acts

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.

OPG Sunday: Celebrating Centennial

Let’s celebrate with an art party! We will design our own mixed media, artful party hats and paint over-the-top, vibrant cakes.

Suitable for ages 3+

Free admission, no registration required.

This event is generously sponsored by Ontario Power Generation.

OPG Sunday: Taking Care

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.

OPG Sunday: Get Cozy

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.

OPG Sunday: Natural Textures

Let’s celebrate nature in our artwork. We will be creating textured art with real leaves and gelli-plate printing techniques!

Suitable for ages 3+

Free admission, no registration required.

This event is generously sponsored by Ontario Power Generation.

Christina Leslie: Likkle Acts Opening Reception

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.

Oshawa100 Photo Contest Opening Gala

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].

Unity Through The Arts Opening Reception

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].

Jack Bush: Life and Art

Join us to learn about the life and art of Jack Bush. Guest lecturer Sarah Stanners, art historian and Director of Jack Bush Catalogue Raisonné Project, will share her extensive knowledge and research about Jack Bush to complement the exhibition “Jack Bush: Breakthrough”. Registration encouraged.

Register

Dr. Sarah Stanners is an independent scholar and Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Art History. She has lectured extensively on modern and contemporary art within an international context, and her career as a curator has specialized in celebrating the art of Canada. She began curating exhibitions in 2003, as Assistant Curator of the Hart House Permanent Collection, and by the end of her tenure as Chief Curator of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, in 2018, she had curated forty exhibitions and collaborated in the publication of ten catalogues; notably Passion Over Reason: Tom Thomson & Joyce Wieland (2017), as well as two nationally touring Jack Bush solo exhibitions: the Jack Bush retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada, which she co-curated with Marc Mayer in 2014, and Jack Bush: In Studio, organized by Calgary’s Esker Foundation in 2016. For the past thirteen years, Dr. Stanners has served as the Director of the Jack Bush Catalogue Raisonné Project, culminating in the release of the four-volume publication in summer 2024, which now stands as the definitive record of Jack Bush’s painted oeuvre.

Go BIG

Artists have often played with scale to convey significance or to demonstrate their painting abilities. Similarly, abstract artists have used large-scale art to create striking visual impact and to highlight the physicality of the process. Whether to inspire awe or elevate abstraction to new levels, the artists in this exhibition have worked at a larger-than-life, even monumental scale.

Abstraction is an important part of the RMG’s story. While the gallery frequently exhibits work by Painters Eleven, it also has an extensive collection of artworks by other important Canadian abstract artists. This exhibition brings together large-scale abstract paintings from the RMG’s permanent collection some of which have rarely been exhibited – mostly due to their sheer size. The big and bold artworks are expressive and joyful, showing that great art comes in all colours, shapes and sizes.

Installation of Go BIG at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2024. Photos by Toni Hafkenscheid.