Spring 2023 Exhibitions at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery

We are pleased to present two new exhibitions this spring! Join us on March 31, 2023 for the opening alongside our regularly scheduled RMG Friday, featuring Remarks with Curator Leila Timmins in Piecework, Artist Talk with RBC Emerging Artist in Residence Brigitte Sampogna, film screenings with DRIFF, and a performance by Mimi O’Bonsawin.

Hangama Amiri, Woman Before A Mirror, Muslin, cotton, polyester, dyed fabric, nylon tulle, velvet, chiffon, silk, sued, and found fabrics, 73” x 53.5”, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and T293 Gallery.

Piecework

Hangama Amiri, Alicia Barbieri, Colleen Heslin, Jeremy Laing, Preston Pavlis, Jagdeep Raina, Moraa Stump, Judith Tinkl, Joyce Wieland, Alice Olsen Williams

April 1, 2023 – September 3, 2023
Curated by Leila Timmins

Using the materiality of quilt making as a metaphor for how the fabric of the world holds together, this exhibition brings together a group of contemporary artists who use textiles and assemblage as world-building tools. Pulling together the seemingly discarded, quilts are a composition of scraps, held together with the intention of offering warmth and comfort. This process of building something new from what was left behind, offers an orientation for engagement and opens possibilities for what can become. Quilts also occupy a set of social relations, where the making and sharing is often intergenerational and collective. They are meant to be passed down and cherished, appreciating in value through use.

Starting from a material approach, this exhibition is maximalist in form, weaving together the different ways that artists have picked up quilting as both metaphor and formal strategy in their work. Taken together, the exhibition forms a patchwork of ideas and objects, centering materiality and sensuousness as a ground for the various approaches and intentions within the works.

Related programming:
Curatorial Tour
April 20, 2023
7-7:45pm

Presented in partnership with The Images Festival

Brigitte Sampogna, Nowhere. No, Where? Now Here., 2023, organza, satin ribbon, and invisible thread.

Nowhere. No, where? Now here.

February 28, 2023 – April 23, 2023
Artist Residency
Brigitte Sampogna
Curated by Hannah Keating

In Nowhere. No, where? Now here. Brigitte Sampogna draws a connective line between laundry and the cyclical nature of self-discovery. From clothes to linens, textiles constitute an intimate layer of the material worlds we build around ourselves. Overtime, these garments pass through a, sometimes careful, sometimes hurried, cycle of personal or familial care. Stains endure scrubbing, holes are mended, and new becomes old so that layers of the past exist within the present. Eventually some articles may be discarded, while others pass to the next generation. In short, laundry is relentless, and consequently, it is an apt metaphor for the ongoing work of getting to know one’s self.

Mary E. Rawlyk (Canadian, b. 1934), The Canadian Apron Flag, 1982, relief printing and heat- transferred colour xerography on paper. Gift of George and Mary Rawlyk, 1989.

Mary Rawlyk: Domestic Disruptions

March 11, 2023 – June 18, 2023
Curated by Sonya Jones

Artist Mary Rawlyk’s artwork explores how housework goes unnoticed and unpaid. During the 1970s, Mary Rawlyk was a full-time mother, housewife and a trained printmaker. Struggling to find time and energy to make art, she wrote: “There are times when I feel my very soul and creativity are extinguished by household trivia. Many prints never reach completion because of domestic disruptions.” She began reading feminist texts and discovered she was not alone in her dissatisfaction with the domestic role, and realized that her art could be a way to express her struggles. Rawlyk developed a series entitled Unpaid Labour (1973-1977) that explores domestic labour through imagery of the household objects she used such as a stove, iron, and sewing machines. Her series entitled Housewife (1982), incorporates a portrait of herself within the domestic objects, a personal reflection on feeling invisible and isolated in daily domestic tasks. A more overt political comment on women’s roles is seen in Canadian Apron Flag (1982) which replaces the maple leaf with an apron, it’s ties mimicking hands on hips—a confrontational gesture.