Oakville Museum and Ontario Culture Days present The Sleeper at Erchless Estate

The Oakville Museum at Erchless Estate, in partnership with Ontario Culture Days, presents The Sleeper, a new participatory art installation by acclaimed artist Shary Boyle, created especially for the Oakville community. The installation opens on September 19 as part of the Culture Days festival’s opening weekend and will remain on display until November 2025. 

As part of the Ontario Culture Days Creatives in Residence series, this evocative work offers a rare offline ritual for our unsettled times, where fears are composted into flowers and silence is transformed into bloom. Visitors are invited to reflect, engage, and explore the transformative power of art.

About the installation 

Installed in the master bedroom of the colonial Erchless Estate, The Sleeper asks one haunting question: What keeps you up at night? Crafted from biodegradable cardboard, the life-sized effigy invites visitors to slip their private worries, fears, and restless thoughts into its hollow chest. At the close of the festival, the figure, heavy with the community’s unspoken voices, will be buried in the museum gardens. In its place, a Moon Garden of white spring flowers will bloom next season, offering collective renewal where anxieties once lay.

Community members are invited to contribute to the installation by answering the title question: What keeps you up at night? Responses can be dropped off at the installation at the Oakville Museum (8 Navy Street), or at any of the following satellite ballot box locations: 

• Oakville Public Library Central Branch – 120 Navy Street, Oakville
• Oakville Public Library Glen Abbey Branch – 1415 Third Line, Oakville
• Oakville Public Library White Oaks Branch – 1070 McCraney Street East, Oakville
• Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (MCFN) - 2789 Mississauga Road, Hagersville

More ways to celebrate Culture Days at the Oakville Museum 

As one of Oakville’s Culture Days Hubs, the Oakville Museum’s historic grounds will be transformed into a living canvas on Saturday, September 27 from 1 to 4:30 p.m. 

with free activities that invite the community to wander, learn, create, and dream.

• The Gardens of Erchless Estate: From Indigenous plant knowledge to Victorian kitchen gardens to 1920s rock gardens, every generation has left its roots in the soil. Join our expert horticulture staff for a guided walk through a landscape rich with memory.
• Shibori & Indigo: Dip into tradition with the Japanese art of resist dyeing. Fold, bind, and transform plain cotton into a luminous, one-of-a-kind textile.
• Night Owls in Paper & Imagination: Craft your own three-dimensional owl. Vivid and dreamlike, a companion to the things that keep you awake after dark.
• Vintage Cards & Quills: Make a keepsake card with vintage papers and try your hand at penmanship in Oakville’s very first post office.
• Beading Workshop with Grandmother’s Voice: Engage in an experience of Indigenous teaching and symbolism, woven bead by bead into shared memory.

Between workshops and wanderings, visitors can explore the Museum’s exhibitions and multimedia presentation, each one a doorway into Oakville’s layered stories.

For more information, visit the Oakville Museum website or search “Oakville” on the Culture Days website. 

Background 

• Artist Shary Boyle spent nearly a year developing The Sleeper, a reflective and participatory installation exploring this year’s festival theme, “The Shape of Memory.”
• Boyle is one of eight artists selected for the 2025 Creatives in Residence series, each creating site-specific works that engage communities across Ontario and invite audiences to experience art in innovative and immersive ways.