The 2024 edition of Convergence Music & Art Festival, Oshawa’s annual free outdoor street festival, will occur on Saturday, September 21. Convergence features live music performances, wrestling, skateboarding displays, food trucks and various outdoor vendors across a footprint stretching from Centre Street to Mary Street, Bagot to Bond. Oshawa Tourism organizes Convergence in conjunction with many partners, including the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, which is co-presenting with the City of Oshawa a new interactive art exhibit in the former Bus Station downtown, ‘Points of Connection,’ located at Bond and Centre, as part of this year's Convergence ArtBlock programming.
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is one of the country’s leading modern art galleries, with the most extensive collection of Painters Eleven artworks. The Gallery’s purpose-built backyard stage has seen a variety of acts perform, including Dizzy, one of this year’s Convergence headliners.
On Friday, September 20, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery will host the Convergence launch party, which will feature Toronto-based R&B singer/songwriter Joel Anderson.
Artists participating in ‘Points of Connection’ include:
Lens-based artist Christina Leslie from Toronto. Leslie has exhibited in the Czech Republic, Jamaica, France and the United States. Her most photographic series ‘Sugar Coat’ was exhibited at the BAND Gallery in Rochester, New York and will be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, opening in November. Her ‘EveryTING Irie’ series is in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Malik McKoy is from Surrey, B.C., and is currently pursuing his MFA degree at Concordia University, Montreal. He works in both paint and digital media, creating images that merge physical realities and digital imaginings. McKoy has previously exhibited work at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery.
LeuWebb Projects is the combined talents of artists Christine Leu and Alan Webb. With backgrounds in design, Leu and Webb create innovative projects that galvanize the experience of a place, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. Their 2019 installation for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche Toronto at Fort York was an intriguing use of technology and art, manifesting the metaphor of humans as beacons of light. Another one of their projects was the aforementioned Robert McLaughlin Gallery Backyard.
Andil Gosine is a graduate of R.S. McLaughlin CVI Oshawa and is currently a Professor of Environmental Arts and Justice at York University. His 2021 book, ‘Nature's Wild: Love, Sex and Law in the Caribbean’ forms the basis of a new exhibit, ‘Nature's Wild,’ opening next year at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington DC. His ongoing project explores the binary choice between humans and animals as a tool for colonialism and empire, a hierarchy which decides who among us is human and who among us is animal. The question posed is, what if we all agreed we were all equal, equally animals?
Whitby-based interdisciplinary artist Brigitte Sampogna uses photography, video, installation, and sewing work. She has a BFA from OCAD University in Integrated Media and has exhibited at the Ignite Gallery, Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, and at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery.
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery has been the centre of the arts in the city of Oshawa for many decades. While the RMG's origin story runs through the Painters Eleven, who would gather in Whitby at Thickson Point to paint and plan, the Gallery’s ongoing importance to the City’s story is on display at ‘Points of Connection’ through the wide variety of artists who all share a point of connection with the Gallery itself.
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