Season Launch

Thursday 19 September 2019
Members’ Preview: 5–6 pm
Public Reception: 6–7:30 pm

The Season Launch celebrates four new exhibitions, including Dr Jacquelyn Coutré’s Leiden circa 1630: Rembrandt Emerges. This not-to-miss show offers a revelatory introduction to the Dutch master’s formative years. We also celebrate a new exhibition space, the Franks Gallery, in Etherington House, with Between Chance and Order: Milly Ristvedt. Two additional shows—Tracing Self and Other and Split Between the I and the Gaze—draw upon our contemporary collections to consider how we define ourselves, and see and experience others. These exhibitions run 24 August–1 December 2019. We will also celebrate a dramatic newly commissioned work by Sandra Brewster, gracing the Atrium.

LEIDEN CIRCA 1630: REMBRANDT EMERGES

Rembrandt van Rijn, a virtuoso in the interpretation of the human experience, had his start as an independent master in his native Leiden. It was in this city—known for its university, its printing industry and its textile production—that he experimented boldly with a variety of techniques and styles. Around 1630, he arrived at his signature pictorial vocabulary of compelling facial expression, evocative textures, powerful chiaroscuro and deep psychological presence. This visual language served him well in the competitive market for art in Amsterdam, when he moved to that city.

Curated by Dr Jacquelyn N. Coutré, Bader Curator and Researcher of European Art, Leiden circa 1630: Rembrandt Emerges features more than 30 works of art by Rembrandt and his circle as a celebration of the artist and his wide-reaching impact, marking the 350th anniversary of his death. Highlighting beautiful works from The Bader Collection by Rembrandt, Jan Lievens, Isaac de Jouderville and others, as well as numerous North American loans, this exhibition is an extraordinary investigation of experimentation, emulation and ambition in seventeenth-century Holland. The exhibition will go on a national tour following its run at Agnes.

AGNES THANKS the Isabel and Alfred Bader Fund of Bader Philanthropies and the Government of Canada.

TRACING SELF AND OTHER

Taking Arnaud Maggs’s dramatic 48-part portrait of the Orford String Quartet as a starting point, Tracing Self and Other presents a selection of portraits and self-portraits from Agnes’s collection. This exhibition considers some of the ways we know (or fail to know) one another and ourselves, through a range of artist’s approaches to capturing those complicated points where cool perception, memory, incomprehension, passion and compassion collide.

Many of the subjects in Tracing Self and Other are creators: artists, writers and musicians. The exhibition conjures a sense of intimacy, especially in the self-portraits, which probe beneath the surface of appearance. In tone and style, the works range from the studied documentary style of Joseph Hartmans’s view of Tim Pitsiuluk in his studio to the lush, expressive narrative of Rebecca Soudant’s embroidered Tapestry of Birth. They hold in common a quality of interrogation. Together, this art raises questions about the how we value one another: how we celebrate, how we hurt, and how we heal.

The featured works are by Stephen Andrews, Joseph Hartman, Daniel Hughes, York Lethbridge, Arnaud Maggs, Chris Miner, Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue, Jamasie Padluk Pitseolak, Lisa Visser and Joyce Wieland.

SPLIT BETWEEN THE I AND THE GAZE

Peeping. Staring. Gazing. Glancing. This exhibition brings together a diverse range of works, each exploring different acts of looking. Artists use various strategies to draw attention to the ways in which we look, calling into question the assumed roles of passive spectator or active participant. Split Between the I and the Gaze implicates the viewer by placing them in the position of both the observer and the observed. Drawn from the contemporary collection, the works in the exhibition mediate between the sense of invasion and invitation. Viewers are coerced into different ways of looking when they are confronted with direct gazes, fragmented bodies, personal spaces and belongings.

Featured artists are Stephen Andrews, Adrian Blackwell, Eric Doeringer, Douglas Kirton, Germaine Koh, Louise Noguchi, Lisa Steele, Diana Thorneycroft and John Watt.

Curated by the students of Contemporary Art and Curatorial Practice in the Department of Art History & Art Conservation, with Professor Jen Kennedy.

BETWEEN CHANCE AND ORDER: MILLY RISTVEDT

Preeminent painter Milly Ristvedt presents a selection of recent abstract works in the inaugural exhibition Between Chance and Order in the Franks Gallery. Over her long career, Ristvedt has had over 50 solo exhibitions and her work has been included in major exhibitions in Canada and abroad. Ristvedt’s abstract, acrylic canvases are held in private, corporate and public collections including Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Art Gallery of Ontario, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and Harvard University. An advocate for artists’ rights, she was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012. Ristvedt completed an MA in Art History at Queen’s University in 2011. She lives and works in Tamworth, Ontario.

CONTINUING EXHIBITIONS

To 1 December 2019: Let’s Talk About Sex, bb

To 1 December 2019: Stepping Out: Clothes for a Gallery Goer

To 12 April 2020: The Art of African Ivory

Agnes Etherington Art Centre is a globally networked art museum situated in the heart of Queen’s University’s historic campus at Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Agnes Etherington Art Centre
36 University Avenue, Queen’s University
Kingston, ON K7L 3N6
agnes.queensu.ca
Facebook: @aeartcentre
Twitter: @aeartcentre
Instagram: @aeartcentre

Agnes Etherington Art Centre is an accessible venue, details can be found here.

AGNES THANKS Queen’s University, the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, City of Kingston Arts Fund through the Kingston Arts Council, Ontario Arts Foundation, Government of Canada, Isabel and Alfred Bader Fund of Bader Philanthropies and Lloyd Carr-Harris Foundation, along with funds held at Queen’s University, including: The Bader Legacy Fund, David and Patti Bain Memorial Fund, Janet Braide Memorial Fund, Celebrating Agnes Fund, Collection of Canadian Dress Fund, Dodge Family Indigenous Art Collection Research Fund, Franks Fund, Rita Friendly Kaufman Fund, Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund, David McTavish Art Study Fund, Chancellor Richardson Memorial Fund, George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, John L. Russell and Gerald Brenner Fund, Iva Speers Fund for Art Education, and Stonecroft Foundation for the Arts Fund. We are grateful for the crucial ongoing support of our members, and corporate and private donors.

Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, Head of an Old Man in a Cap, around 1630, oil on panel, from the exhibition Leiden circa 1630: Rembrandt Emerges. Gift of Alfred and Isabel Bader, 2003 (46-031). Photo: John Glembin

Image: Jamasie Padluk Pitseolak, Grub Shoe, 2011, serpentinite, from the exhibition Tracing Self and Other. Purchase, Donald Murray Shepherd Bequest Fund, 2018 (61-005). Photo: Bernard Clark

For further information, contact Kate Yüksel, Communications Coordinator at (343) 333.5478 or kate.yuksel@queensu.ca.