Gairloch Gardens is quieter now that the leaves are down along Lakeshore Road East, but the gallery house at 1306 Lakeshore Road East is busier than the lawn suggests. Between now and late January, Oakville Galleries has put three things in that building. The first is an exhibition built around embroidered drawings and film. The second is a run of hands-on workshops in fabric, clay and print. The third is the gallery's first craft fair, on December 5 and 6.
All three are about handmade work. The season starts with looking at stitched work, moves to making something, and ends with buying it. For anyone in Eastlake planning a few short walks to the gallery before the new year, the order of those visits makes a difference.
Start with the embroidery
The exhibition is Silent Songs by Aideen Barry, an Irish conceptual artist. Oakville Galleries describes it as her first solo exhibition in Canada. It includes the world premiere of her film Embroidering the Earth's Mantle, along with a new body of intricately embroidered drawings and a series of printed film stills.
Admission is free, and Barry's show is split between the gallery's two sites. The Gairloch half is in the historic gallery rooms by the lake. There, Barry presents film, animation and drawing inspired by the surrealist painter Remedios Varo. The gallery describes Varo's paintings as combining science, alchemy, mysticism, medieval imagery and engineering. Barry draws on Varo's themes of displacement, transformation and survival and turns them into meditations on creation, labour, fate and women's agency.
The downtown half is at the Centennial Square gallery. It presents two earlier films as a video installation. The Song of the Bleeding Tree (2023) looks at landscape, ecology and mythology. Oblivion (2021) was made with Inuit throat singer Riit and Irish harpist Aisling Lyons, and brings together two musical traditions that were once suppressed under colonial rule.
The exhibition page links an exhibition text by Jenifer Papararo, the gallery's interim executive director, and an English audio guide by Barry, along with a Chinese-language version. Listening to the guide on the walk over makes for a more focused first visit. Culture Ireland supports the exhibition.
The Gairloch rooms are worth seeing first because the workshops pick up the same materials. Barry's new drawings are embroidered, the film's title is about embroidery, and the most unusual workshop on the calendar asks you to bring fabric of your own.
A fabric workshop that ends in the gardens
Bodies of Memory with Erica Stocking and Delphi runs on Saturday, November 21, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Gairloch. It is part of the program of talks and workshops that accompanies Silent Songs. It is free, pre-registration is required, and it is capped at 20 participants.
The materials list makes the workshop unusual. Participants are asked to bring a garment or piece of fabric that holds personal significance. The gallery's examples include a gifted piece of clothing you never liked but never gave away, a scrap of an old baby blanket, a grandparent's handkerchief, or fabric that has sat on a sewing shelf for years.
Stocking is an artist who works across sculpture, performance and installation. Her collaborator Delphi is a doll. Delphi opens the session with a presentation, and a guided meditation follows. Participants then turn their fabric into figures, with Stocking providing materials and techniques. At the end, everyone photographs their figures in the landscape around Gairloch Gardens.
That makes it one of the few November programs that takes place partly outdoors. The workshop draws on the surrealist themes in Barry's exhibition. If you see the embroidered drawings beforehand, you will recognize the ideas the session builds on. Public Programs and Engagement Manager Isabella Springett curated the program with Papararo.
The rest of the making calendar
The other workshops follow the same idea for younger visitors and for families. Each one leaves you with something handmade. With the holidays approaching, most of those things are gifts or decorations.
| Date | Program | Who it's for | Cost and registration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday, November 12, 4–5 p.m. | Little Artist, with Oakville Public Library | Young children | Free, pre-registration required |
| Saturday, November 14, noon–2:30 p.m. | Family Holiday Workshop: Clay Wreaths | One parent and one child | Listed at $63.75 for members, $75 for non-members |
| Saturday, November 21, 2–4 p.m. | Bodies of Memory | 20 participants | Free, pre-registration required |
| Thursday, November 26, 4–5 p.m. | Little Artist | Young children | Free, pre-registration required |
| Saturday, November 28, 10:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. or 1:30–3:30 p.m. | Saturday Youth Workshop: Holiday Cards | Ages 6 to 13 | $34 for members, $40 for non-members |
| Thursday, December 17, 4–5 p.m. | Little Artist | Young children | Free, pre-registration required |
The Clay Wreaths session makes enough for two wreaths, and supplies and kiln firing are included. Little Artist sessions take place in the Gairloch Gardens Education Centre.
Half of these programs fall on Saturdays and half on Thursday afternoons. On weekends, a few extra parking spaces are available beside the gallery entrance, in addition to the free main lot on Lakeshore Road East.
The Atelier opens on a day the gallery is usually closed
The season ends with The Atelier: Craft Fair. Oakville Galleries describes it as a presentation and market of local and regional crafts. It is the gallery's first craft fair, and it takes place in the Gairloch Gardens building. The hours are:
- Saturday, December 5, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
- Sunday, December 6, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The Sunday is unusual. The gallery is normally open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., open Mondays by appointment, and closed on Sundays. December 6 is one of the few Sundays this season when you can simply walk in.
The fair is juried. Oakville Galleries set out to select up to 40 artisans, designers, creative small businesses and independent makers based on the quality and originality of their work, its presentation and price range, and the variety of the overall mix. The gallery asked for work that is handmade, independently designed or produced by the applicants themselves, and suitable for a family-friendly arts venue. Oakville Galleries takes no commission on sales, so what you pay goes to the maker. Every selected artisan is required to attend both days, so the Sunday market will have the same vendors as the Saturday one.
Because the fair takes place in the gallery building, Silent Songs will still be on display that weekend.
Planning around the holiday closures
The exhibition's last day is Saturday, January 23, 2027. Several days in between are lost to holiday closures. The gallery is closed on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.
Put those dates together with the usual Tuesday-to-Saturday schedule and the holiday stretch gets short. From Thursday, December 24 through Friday, January 1, the gallery is open for walk-in visits only on Tuesday, December 29 and Wednesday, December 30. If you are bringing out-of-town guests to see Silent Songs, plan around those two days, or visit on December 23 or January 2.
The building has a few practical limits. The public gallery areas are wheelchair accessible. However, the entrance has no automatic door opener, and there is no accessible ground-floor washroom. If anyone in your group needs either, plan with that in mind.
To fit everything in, see Silent Songs in November and bring a piece of fabric on the 21st if you have one in mind. The Atelier is on the first weekend of December. That leaves the downtown Centennial Square films for a January visit before the show closes on the 23rd.
Our team lives and works in Oakville, and we follow what is happening at places like Gairloch as closely as the market itself. If you would like to talk through a move within Southeast Oakville, or just want a local perspective, the Bernard Team would be glad to hear from you. Schedule a consultation whenever it suits you.
