Spend Valentine’s Day at the RMG

Step up your Valentine’s Day game this year! Make a memorable impression on your special someone or have a great day off with the family at the RMG. Valentine’s Day is on a Sunday this year so you have the perfect opportunity to spend the whole day celebrating with your loved ones at the RMG.

For the Family

Start the morning by heading to the RMG’s Valentine’s Day Brunch together and dig into the delicious menu from Pilar’s Catering. The menu features something for everyone in the family, even the pickiest of eaters, with baked goods, a full hot breakfast including everything from bacon to French toast, salads, cheeses, and finally a dessert buffet. With two seating’s available at 10:30am and 12:30pm, you’ll have lots of time to enjoy your quiet Sunday morning before the fun begins. Reservations are required so be sure to book your seats soon before they fill up.

After bunch, you can head down to one of our many galleries to check out the latest exhibitions and pieces from our permanent collection, or bring the little ones down to the studio for the Valentine’s addition of our monthly OPG Second Sundays. Work together to explore various materials to create heart shape inspired activities including sun catchers and garlands using diffusing paper and expressive abstract paintings in the studio. On your way out, be sure to check out the RMG Shop. Young or old, there are plenty of last minute Valentine’s gifts, like the Rob Ryan His n’ Her coffee mug set for mom and dad, or a craft kit and hand-made sock puppets for the little ones. However you choose to celebrate your Valentine’s, the RMG is a great way to go for the whole family.

Photo by Brilynn Ferguson

The First Date

Start the morning off by surprising your date with a romantic brunch with a panoramic view. Checking out the gallery with your special someone is a great chance to strike up conversation, and ensure there is no first date awkwardness. Talking about art is also a great way to get to know one another whether you’ve been together for 20 years, or you are 20 minutes into your first date.

A great place to start is Holly King’s newest exhibition Edging Toward the Mysterious. This collection consists of various large-scale photographs of her constructed photographs of imagined landscapes. While enjoying the art together, present your loved one with a gift from the RMG Shop. Among the abundance of art catalogues and other popular titles, the RMG Shop has a wide selection of beautiful, locally sourced handmade items such as jewelry, specialty soaps, and teas. Whether the gift is for him or her, the RMG Shop is a great place to come looking for that one of a kind Valentine’s gift that will top off a fantastic date.

The 1,000th Date

Whether you and your partner are new to the gallery or not, there are plenty of reasons to make the RMG your Valentine’s destination this year.

After enjoying a delicious brunch in the Arthur’s on the 4th head directly downstairs to our most recent exhibition, The Other NFB. The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has long been acclaimed for documentary, animated and feature films, which are among Canada’s iconic cultural products and exports. But few Canadians know that during a pivotal period in the country’s history—the mid-twentieth century—the NFB also functioned as the country’s official photographer, which is where this series of photos stems from. This collection is sure to bring back some memories and spark conversation about times past, making it a Valentine’s day to remember.

Don’t forget to visit the shop and get something special for your special someone! Pick a gift together and get someone you will enjoy in your home, made by a local artisan.

As the afternoon comes to a close and you’ve enjoyed each and every exhibition, remember that your time here at the gallery doesn’t have to end on February 14th. Volunteering as a couple can be a great experience, offering bonding time while doing something great for the community.

Holly King at Core 21

The RMG is thrilled to present artist Holly King’s photograph Chalk Shoreline in the windows of Core21, a co-working space in downtown Oshawa. The artwork is in conjunction with the exhibition Holly King: Edging Towards the Mysterious and will be on view until Spring 2015.

This project is the first of a series of artworks in the windows of downtown businesses, and an on-going partnership with the RMG and Core21.

The RMG extends a special thank you to Media Sign for the beautiful vinyl printing and ongoing support.

RMG Fridays: Folklore & Myth

Join on January 8 from 7-10pm for an evening of folklore & myth with Celtic music by Ugly Horse. Paint Fairy Doors in the studio, catch My Vivid Life’s: Ireland Webisode in our Friday Film Features screening room and celebrate the opening of Holly King: Edging Towards the Mysterious. In Gallery A, we will introduce artist Janice McHaffie.

On the first Friday of the month, join the RMG in celebrating local talent. The gallery buzzes with live musical performances, short films, interactive art experiences, open gallery spaces, social mingling and more. Suitable for music lovers, youth, families, date nights, and culture-vultures.

Free to attend | 7-10pm | Cash Bar | All ages welcome. Follow the twitter feed at #RMGFridays!

Curator’s Choice: Holly King

In 2012, the RMG was gifted Solitude by Holly King. I placed the work in the permanent collection exhibition Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear, the following year. Now, we have an opportunity to celebrate King’s work in a larger way with the mid-career retrospective Edging Towards the Mysterious.

Solitude is earlier than any of the work in the new exhibition. King practices mise en scène photography. Her process begins by staging her landscape settings in her studio using various props and materials. She then photographs the theatrical fabrications—the end result is the creation of “imaginary landscapes that hover between reality and fiction.” In Solitude, a horizon line helps to differentiate the dominating sky and the water. Two small islands, made of found foliage, are surrounded by the immense, never ending blue sky and water, giving, as the title suggests, a sense of remoteness. The island’s remoteness prompts thoughts of untouched/unexplored nature—a welcomed retreat. However, the materiality of the staged setting in this photograph—the painterly quality of the sky and the foliage used to suggest land—reminds the viewer of the artificiality of the waterscape. King’s sharp focus photography does not allow the viewer to mistake the landscape as real, but encourages instilling their own personal experiences through their memories and imagination with both the objects used and the constructed environment. The tension between illusion and reality in King’s work becomes a journey for the viewer to explore.-

– Linda Jansma, Senior Curator

A look through the lens…

This winter, the RMG shifts its focus to exploring how artists view the world through images. Photography is used to document history, to capture a memory, to tell a story or to create an imaginary landscape. We invite you to consider capturing these moments and the role of the artist behind the lens when you visit.

The Other NFB: The National Film Board of Canada’s Still Photography Division, 1941-1971 is an exhibition exploring our national identity and history by showing how Canada was presented to the world. Through this collection of images, we see a slice of Canadian life at this important time in history. This exhibition serves as a reminder of how photography informs our national identity. How do you relate to these images? How does the photograph relate to your personal narrative or family story?

In Their Stories: Unidentified Portraits from the Thomas Bouckley Collection we are taking a different approach to historical photography. In this exhibition, we put out a call for writers to create narratives for a selection of unidentified portraits from our collection of historical Oshawa photographs. The stories we received were varied, creative and shine a new and exciting look into the possible lives of these people. We encourage you to think about these unidentified subjects and the lives they may have lived.

We take another look at the photographic image in Holly King: Edging Towards the Mysterious. In this mid-career retrospective, the artist presents a series of idealistic and beautiful landscapes. At first glance, you hope these are real— possible utopian escapes. But at second glance you feel a sense of loneliness and anxiety from something unsettling in the landscape. This feeling is caused by King’s use of staged photography. By manufacturing her landscapes, we are forced to question the image we are presented with— is it real, is it fake, or are we lost in our imaginations?

In April, we will celebrate the CONTACT Photography Festival with an exhibition by RMG Exposed winner Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock entitled Familiarity in the Foreign. The images represent the quiet moments that she found among the chaos of travel, as well as memories of places visited.

In conjunction with our photography exhibitions, we are excited to offer accompanying programming. Please join us for a symposium, featuring The Other NFB, that will examine Canada and Canadian identity through visual image. A tour of the exhibition will be given by curator Carol Payne, followed by an interactive discussion with 5 panelists. This will be an invigorating day so register early to guarantee your spot!