The City of Oshawa began collaborating with Durham College’s Community Collaborations Course in 2015. Over the past four years, student's work has been showcased in three murals located at Civic Square (located on Centre Street at City Hall), vinyl images affixed to the windows of the Arts Resource Centre, and in Alexandra Park adjacent to Lakeridge Health Oshawa as well as inside the hospital. For the 2019/2020 project, we will be choosing locations in our Community Centres and Oshawa Seniors Community Centres.
Body Language
2019, Body Language, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, two artist exhibition
David Bobier, Dani Crosby
"Body language is comprised of all that is not said during a conversation. It is the intangible and subjective understanding of the expressions, gestures, intonations, temperaments, spatial configurations and feelings during an encounter with another that allow us to make sense of the experience. In much the same way, the works in this exhibition are about an intuitive understanding of another person’s experience and a desire for connection that exceeds the limits of language. Working collaboratively, Oshawa-based illustrator and artist Dani Crosby and London-based multi-media artist David Bobier each produced a new body of work that responds to personal stories of Durham residents.
Collected anonymously through an online survey, participants were prompted with questions intended to inspire personal reflection such as: “What challenges you most on a daily basis?” and “When you first meet people, what do you wish they understood about you that is not immediately noticeable?” The artists then selected twelve stories from the diverse group of participants to translate and represent in different ways through their work.
Together the works reframe personal stories into sensuous and participatory experiences, allowing for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the challenges and desires that exist just below the surface."
- Leila Timmins, Curator