Moving Image: The RMG’s New Permanent Collection Exhibition

This blog post comes from the desk of Senior Curator, Linda Jansma.

Each year The Robert McLaughlin Gallery completely revamps the Isabel McLaughlin Gallery, a space that is dedicated to the RMG’s permanent collection. When I first came to the gallery, the norm was to give a slice of art history from a chronological perspective: 19th century landscapes and portraits were followed by the more experimental works by member of the Group of Seven. From there, a selection of works by artists of the Canadian Group of Painters, a group that was formed in 1933 and on to the 1950s and ending before abstract expressionism. It was a traditional way of showing things, but a little on the dull side.

What would happen if an A.Y. Jackson landscape from the 1940s was placed beside a Rae Johnson landscape from the 1990s? A traditional Emily Carr landscape beside a wildly exuberant work by regional artist Lynn McIlvride? A large scale photograph by Montreal-based artist Holly King, beside a small still life by Arthur Lismer? Well, a lot more fun from a curatorial perspective and something that requires more work/thought from our audience!

During the third week of August, we’ll install the exhibition Moving Image. It will include paintings of landscapes that show rushing water and clouds scuttling across the sky; the migration of both people and animals; works that are emotionally moving and create illusions of movement. Works will be historic and contemporary, include painting, drawing, sculpture and photography.

A favourite of mine in this exhibition is a work called Flock from 2009 by Kingston-based artist Don Maynard. From a distance, the installation looks like a swooping flock of birds, but on closer examination, you see a number of traditional paper airplanes (made of thin aluminum rather than paper) with their noses embedded into the wall. When I saw the work in Don’s studio, my first thought was “what a great idea!!” I still think that, and I hope visitors to the gallery enjoy both it and the other works in Moving Image.

 

Image- Flock (installation views and details), Don Maynard, aluminum, 2009

 

Curator’s Choice: Moving Image

This blog post comes from the desk of Senior Curator, Linda Jansma.

Beyond Measure: Domesticating Distance is an exhibition initiated by emerging curator Ambereen Siddiqui and assisted by a Culturally Diverse Curatorial Project grant through the Ontario Arts Council.

Its theme of artists living in the context of the diaspora, segues with one of the sections in Moving Image, the RMG’s new permanent collection exhibition. Millions of people are on the move and displaced from their home countries, and that displacement leaves voids and longing for what once was.

A key work in Moving Image is a video by Vessna Perunovich entitled Unoccupied NY. It follows the artist through different parts of New York City as she carries a single mattress on her back. Her work addresses concepts of migration, longing and boundaries, as well as the diversity of New York’s populations along ethnic, social and economic lines. Perunovich, like four of the five artists in Beyond Measure, is an immigrant to Canada who relates to a sense of the dis-rootedness and yearning that comes with leaving one’s home country. This work, along with Surendra Lowatia, Tazeen Qayyum, Meera Margaret Singh, Asma Sultana, and Abdullah Syed challenges the viewer to look more deeply into the individual experience and the singular work and see its universal themes.

Image: Vessna Perunovich, Unoccupied NY, video still.

 

Fall On The Move

This fall, we are exploring how artists have conveyed the overlapping themes of memory, migration and movement with two exhibitions: Moving Image and Beyond Measure: Domesticating Distance.

In Moving Image, Senior Curator Linda Jansma explores how the theme of movement manifests itself in the RMG’s permanent collection. Selected from our collection of over 4,500 works, this exhibition examines not only physical movement of objects and people, but also those images that emotionally move us. With our permanent collection, we continue to tell the story modern and contemporary art across Canada.

The RMG is thrilled to partner with SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) to present Beyond Measure: Domesticating Distance. Curated by Ambereen Siddiqui, this exhibition explores contemporary South Asian perspectives on the notion of absence within diasporic communities and dislocation within the experience of migration. Featuring performance and installation, photography and sculpture, the artists in this exhibition use their multidisciplinary practices to echo the diversity of their layered experiences.

In conjunction with these exhibitions, we are pleased to offer complimentary programming. Please join us for a symposium featuring a panel discussion by the artists in Beyond Measure: Domesticating Distance on Saturday 12 September. As well, join artist Tazeen Qayyum on Sunday, 15 November in the studio for an introductory workshop to Miniature Painting of Persian and South Asian tradition, outlining the different traditional styles and schools, and contextualizing contemporary practices.

On view:

Moving Image
Works from the Permanent Collection
August 22, 2015 – August 20, 2016
Opening: RMG Fridays: 11 September, 7-10pm

Beyond Measure: Domesticating Distance
Surendra Lawoti, Tazeen Qayyum, Meera Margaret Singh, Asma Sultana and Abdullah M. I. Syed
September 5, 2015 – January 3, 2016
Opening: RMG Fridays: 11 September, 7-10pm

Programming:

Symposium
Beyond Measure: Domesticating Distance Symposium
Saturday 12 September, 11am-3pm

The symposium will include a tour of the exhibition with guest curator, Ambereen Siddiqui followed by a panel discussion with the participating artists; Surendra Lawoti, Tazeen Qayyum, Asma Sultana and Australia-based Abdullah M.I. Syed. This will be an occasion for viewers to ask questions about the process and multidisciplinary practices of each artist, as well as an opportunity for the artists to expand upon the layered and subtle meanings within the artworks.

A complimentary light lunch will be included. Space is limited. FREE! Register by Thursday 3 September at rmg.on.ca. Registration required.

Workshop

Miniature Painting: Art Workshop
with artist Tazeen Qayyum
Sunday, 15 November, 11am – 3:30pm

An introductory workshop to Miniature Painting of Persian and South Asian tradition, outlining the different traditional styles and schools, and contextualizing contemporary practices. The workshop includes an illustrated lecture, demonstrations of various techniques, including the making of qalam (brush). Participants work through a drawing assignment to reinforce a number of different techniques, including Siyah Qalam (drawing with a brush), the charba method of drawing (image transferring), creating a jidwal (traditional border), and preparing and adding rung (colour). All materials provided, but please bring your own lunch.

Space is limited and registration is required. $20 Members / $30 Non-Members

 

Above Image: Walden Pond/Mirror (detail): From the exchange between artists Surendra Lawoti and Meera Margaret Singh for their project “Of Light and Longing, 2014-2015.” Credit to Surendra Lawoti.

Conversation Pieces by Ramune Luminaire and Judith Mason

Since 2011 Ramune Luminaire and Judith A. Mason have been working on a series of collaborative drawings that explore experiences of relationship through mark-making.  Through a series of non-verbal exchanges, each artist takes their turn adding to what is on the paper. In time a composite image emerges; a visual dialogue of call and response.  The work organically grows into an art object, a visual text, saturated with traces of exchange, intuition, growth, development, collapse and re-development.

Extensions of this project have included staging the Conversation Pieces Café at Artspace in Peterborough, where artists were invited to work on several large collaborative pieces.  Luminaire & Mason see this as a potential model for building healthier personal and community relationships, a model requiring interdependence, not self-sufficiency.  Luminaire & Mason also facilitated workshops at RMG Culture Days in 2013 and 2014, inviting members of the pubic to converse on paper, co-creating mini-artworks in silence.

During the month of May Luminaire & Mason were the artists in residence in the RMG’s Art Lab. Their proposal was to create artwork in conversation with pieces from the gallery’s permanent collection. They selected works from the Go Figure exhibition. Below are extracts from the journal of their process.

Image above: Conversations #1 & 2, Ramune Luminaire & Judith A. Mason, mixed media on paper

Ramune: how do I have a conversation with an existing, completed, piece of work? By Morrisseau, an artist I love and admire?

Sacred Journey, Norval Morrisseau, 1977

Sacred Journey, Norval Morrisseau, 1977

 

Take my paper up to the gallery – blissfully silent, I am alone. Sit in front of the picture and meditate for 10 minutes, then open my eyes and just look at it for 10 minutes, breathing it in. My hand starts drawing a vessel, then I put in a shape familiar to me, the way I draw spirits in my journal. Two more figures and I realize I have drawn my mother, who died on Good Friday. The others in the boat are her (now dead) father and grandfather. I am drawing her journey into the afterlife. The bird is her totem animal, the snake a thing she feared. Decide to use Morrisseau’s colours and technique of framing each segment of the image in black paint. Makes me cry.

Nika’s Journey, Ramune Luminaire, 2105

Nika’s Journey, Ramune Luminaire, 2105

 

Judith:  Where to start?  Start with what is familiar.  Follow my hands, intuitions, thoughts – suspend judgement – no beginning, no end….. 

A. Y. Jackson, Indian Home (1927)

A. Y. Jackson, Indian Home (1927)

 

I once copied a drawing of  A.Y. Jackson’s – a pencil sketch of dog team.  What I remember about my drawing was my father’s excitement about how well I had copied it.  My father, a good place to start.  I chose Jackson’s Indian Home, (1927) as my first conversation. I use three sheets of paper – a triptych.  I begin by drawing a house, my Cape Breton summer home, not unlike the house in Jackson’s painting.  I remember the gentle rolling hills, the sea, the wind, Island storms – Island weather.   I draw the pond just below the house, the fire pit, the sound of the nearby poplars, the apple tree, the sharp needled hawthorn that supported my clothes line, the large maple trimmed to allow for the hydro line.  I draw from memory across three sheets of paper, bits and pieces, scattered here and there, without applying the proper rules of perspective.  My memory is scattered, it flints about, hardy landing before jumping to the next. 

Judith A. Mason, Response to A. Y. Jackson, pastel on paper 2015

Judith A. Mason, Response to A. Y. Jackson, pastel on paper 2015

I go back to Jackson.  I scan, then, study, his landscape.  I look at the colorful and shapely vegetation, the crudely painted pine trees, the clouds, the wind, the buildings, and finally the three figures standing outside their home. 

I mix up the order of my triptych.  Then, on top of my chalk pastel landscape I paint out areas in black, break the scape, make abstract what began as representation, create dead areas, deep space.

I look again at Jackson’s painting.  What is interesting here?  Can I honestly say, not “the Canadian landscape”?  That strange preoccupation has ever interested me. I am much more interested in the inner world – a place of relationships – the world of feelings, emotions, sensations, connection.  My eyes settle on the small figures caught in the all-encompassing landscape – is this a mother with her two children?

My eye is drawn to these three figures.  I draw them on two sheets of my disordered triptych, on the surface of my blacked out and coloured pastel abstract – immediately the abstracted landscape becomes a home and a family.  But who’s that lurking in the bushes, in the vegetation out front?  On the third sheet of paper I draw a window blind.

I begin a sketch of a section of the painting, getting to know all its relationships every curve, shape, form, mass.  My eyes fluctuate back and forth between the positive and negative.  I need to know both spaces in order to get this drawing right.  I need the dark and the light.

Judith Mason, Response to A.Y. Jackson2015, pastel and acrylic on paper

Judith Mason, Response to A.Y. Jackson2015, pastel and acrylic on paper

Ramune: I decide to work with Suzy Lake’s photographic piece because I really don’t like it, it makes me angry.

Impositions Maquette, Suzy Lake, 1978

Impositions Maquette, Suzy Lake, 1978

These photos are too calm, not enough struggle, she’s not really trying to get free. Even the graphite bindings Lake’s drawn on the prints look weak. You want to feel bound? I’ll show you how that looks. I make a gel medium transfer of one of Lake’s figures onto my page and scribble it solid. Her images are extended upward, mine becomes a column. A structure that’s preventing the women bound to it from moving forward. Nice girl trying to free herself. Even angrier, I keep working and my image becomes a frenzy of energy. If I draw myself free, can I extend the gesture to Lake?

Ramune Luminaire, Response to Suzy Lake, mixed media on paper, 2015

Ramune Luminaire, Response to Suzy Lake, mixed media on paper, 2015

Judith: I have been looking at both the Georgia O’Keefe photograph and the large blue painting of the young woman on the staircase.

Ramune: I find this portrait compelling.

Kevin Wolff, Shoes, 1995, acrylic on canvas

Kevin Wolff, Shoes, 1995, acrylic on canvas

It’s a portrait of an activist for people with disabilities. He’s wearing a built-up shoe. I just bought a pair of sandals to wear to a wedding with platforms that are almost identical, but I wear mine in an effort to look more beautiful. They are my first response to Wolff’s image – to draw my own leg in the wedding platform. I won’t work from a photo as I think it deadens the image. Why didn’t this artist just exhibit the photo? I’m never sure about the point of photo realism. One leg drawn, who else am I? A lot more than the woman in the debilitating girlie shoe… I find the boots I bought when I first went to art school. I wore them with a mini skirt because I thought that would make me look like a real artist. Then they became my sculpture studio boots. Now they’re my motor bike boots. The leg wearing them looks entirely different – more masculine. When I look at Wolff’s laces I realize he’s photographed his subject’s feet upside down. Why? Now I have to work from a photo, not the real thing. Feels so different, but I love who I am when I see the finished image. Wonder if Wolff’s portrait made his subject love himself more.

Ramune Luminaire’s feet, pastel on paper, 2015

Ramune Luminaire’s feet, pastel on paper, 2015

 

Judith: I find myself working with these two images simultaneously.

Shaun Downey (2013)   

Shaun Downey (2013) Large blue painting of a young girl descending the staircase at the Drake Hotel in Toronto.

Photograph of Georgia O’Keefe in her studio

Photograph of Georgia O’Keefe in her studio

I paint two paintings on the 3 ft X 3 ft canvases I brought into the studio.  Each of my paintings relate to one of these artworks.  A gift has been bestowed.  I step out of the way.

One painting is a modernist abstraction that I might call ‘a copy’ though it’s not a copy in the sense that I copied it. It’s a modernist looking painting.  And it is now that I realize there is an uncanny relationship between photography (the O’Keefe photograph) and modernist painting (the one I am painting).  It is a relationship between the flatness of the photographic image and the flatness of modernist abstraction painting.  I wonder if twentieth century modernist abstraction is the bastard child of design and photography?

I look at Georgia sitting in that seemly dark room accompanied by two large organic objects.  I want a make her and these two objects out of clay?  I begin to sculpt them.  There are obstacles.  I am looking at a two-dimensional photograph and sculpting a three-dimensional object.  There are missing bits of information; the object I am forming is not fully formed.  I remember Rodin’s Gates of Hell, I think about reliefs – as objects in the midst of transformation.  As Hannah Arendt suggests, as objects manifesting.

I look again at the photograph and decide to fold black paper back and forth like a fan. This gesture leads me to the image of an old fashioned camera – of her husband’s camera?  I decide to make an old-fashioned camera out of board, paper and masking tape.  I want to place the three sculptural forms inside the camera.  I want to place her inside the camera.   My whole life feels as if I am living inside a camera.  As a woman I live a life under constant scrutiny.  Even if no one is still watching, I am watching myself.

Make ten large old-fashioned cameras.   Set up the space inside each camera as an interior room in a house.  In each room place a woman with objects from her life. 

We are all living inside a camera.  Surveillance and Servitude.  A future exhibition.

Keep moving…..

The girl stands on the landing in the stairway casting a shadow on the wall.  I only notice the shadow after days of looking at the painting.  She looks like a cut out, a paper doll, a childhood activity I loved as a young girl.  On holidays, buying a book of paper dolls.  The delight of following the bold black lines with my scissors, first the dolls, then the clothes, each outfit complete with folding tabs. 

I go up to the exhibition and look at the painting again.  I am interested in the shadow.  I begin to paint the young woman with her shadow on my abstract ground.  Then a third figure appears, this one unclothed, raw and vulnerable. Then, I think about painting her out of her dress, leaving her dress suspended in air, having her standing naked beside it.  

The conversations stop, the residency is over.

Judith Mason, Three Dancers, acrylic 

Judith Mason, Three Dancers, acrylic

Judith Mason, Abstract O’Keefe, acrylic

Judith Mason, Abstract O’Keefe, acrylic

 

For more information:

www.ramuneluminaire.com

[email protected]

 

 

 

 

The Curator’s View: Louis de Niverville visits the RMG

This blog post comes from the desk of Senior Curator, Linda Jansma.

To say that I was remiss in not taking a notebook and pencil along is an understatement.

Louis de Niverville looking at his work Madame Takes a Bath #1

Louis de Niverville looking at his work Madame Takes a Bath #1

The artist Louis de Niverville came to visit the RMG a couple of weeks ago with friends. Jason, our Preparator, and I had taken some time in the morning to open the vault racks and pull out solander boxes that housed some of his works on paper in order to make viewing the fourteen works from our collection as easy as possible. Louis was absolutely charming, examining each work like it was a long lost relative—and his memory was remarkable. We stood in front of Mother and Child, a painting of what I’d always thought of as an imposing woman holding a crying baby. I knew the child was a two-month old Louis and knew that he had painted the work from a 1933 photograph. I’d always assumed that the woman was quite stern as she sat so monumentally within the picture frame. Not at all. In fact, Louis’s mother was a gentle woman with many children who constantly worked to keep the family organized. Louis’ reminiscences made me re-think a painting I’ve known for many years.

Louis de Niverville  Mother and Child 1970

Louis de Niverville Mother and Child 1970
oil on canvas 183.1 x 91.5 cm Purchase, 1977

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Louis recalled the technique he used for his multi-media works and let us know that the beautiful and delicate Untitled print from 1979 was the first print he’d ever produced and how he used a spray gun to develop his technique. There were other notes to add tohis files: Still Life with Abundance #2 was one of four large collage works representing the seasons, and Mother and Child from 1970 was the last oil on canvas painting that he completed; he also gave us more detailed comments on the medium he used forhis collage works. All of this information is not only useful for RMG staff, but also for researchers who come to access our collection.

Louis de Niverville Untitled 1979 lithograph on paper 46.1 x 55.0 cm Gift of Peter and Susan Swann, 1994

Louis de Niverville Untitled 1979
lithograph on paper
46.1 x 55.0 cm
Gift of Peter and Susan Swann, 1994

 

While Louis was incredibly grateful for the tour of his work, in reality, the pleasure was all ours. What a privilege to a have such a respected Canadian artist tour us through our collection of his work!

Louis de Niverville and Senior Curator Linda Jansma examine Sunset Farm #3

Louis de Niverville and Senior Curator Linda Jansma examine Sunset Farm #3

 

The Curator’s View: Care and Conservation of Art

This post is from the desk of Linda Jansma, Senior Curator.

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a member of the Canadian Museum Association and adheres to their ethical guidelines. Those guidelines include the following paragraph about collections:

Museum collections consist of natural or cultural (i.e. manmade) objects and intellectual property directly owned by the museum, as a public trust, and registered as part of its permanent collection, to be used for the exclusive purposes of preservation, research and presentation to the public.

This week, I read a plain language version of this guideline that came through the American Association of Museums. It reads:

Know what stuff you have
Know what stuff you need
Know where it is
Take good care of it
Make sure someone gets some good out of it. Especially people you care about. And your neighbors.

Well, the RMG has a lot of stuff it has to take care of and part of that care is conservation. Recently, two works from the collection were returned from a conservator that we regularly use: Across the Fields, Newtonbrook by Frederick Brigden and Nature Morte by Jeanne Rheaume. Both treatment reports include a lot of conservation jargon, for example:  “weave distortion,” “drip mark,” “consolidated scratch.” Suffice it to say, the paintings were really dirty and certainly did not look like they did when they left the artist’s studios in 1935 (Brigden) and 1961 (Rheaume).

Image

Before conservation

Image

After Conservation

Above: Nature Morte by Jeanne Rheaume, 1961

Image

Before

Image

After

Above:  Across the Fields, Newtonbrook by Frederick Henry Brigden c. 1935

The above photos give you an idea of the miracles of ammonium cirtrate (pH 7.8), EDTA/Troton, XL/Benzyl alcohol and citric acid/Brij. (Ah, if only there was a plain language version of conservation reports!)

Look for the Brigden painting currently hanging in our Permanent Collection gallery, and look forward to seeing the Rheaume to come out of the vault in 2013.