Agnes presents Brown Butter and Transformations

Agnes turns up the heat this summer with Brown Butter and Transformations.

Berlin Reed: Brown Butter
June 3–July 10, 2022

“If I am to be consumed, my sweetness will elude your palate. A strangling mouthful, a suffocating swallow—I will be a bitter molasses.” —Berlin Reed

Brown Butter is a conversation between Black Canadian artists presented as a six-week multi- disciplinary exhibition by Gastro Curator, Berlin Reed. This project pairs chefs Rawan Ali, Marissa Leon-John and Bashir Munye with artists Jade Fair, Kama La Mackerel, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Odeimin Runners Club, Rye, Gloria C. Swain and Syrus Marcus Ware. Six creative partnerships create an immersive, succulent environment through installations, performances, events, while limited-run artist ‘artifacts’ extend the experience into the life of the viewer. Brown Butter is not a dining experience. It is an internalization of Black thought and a gavage of Black expression.

Curated by Berlin Reed and produced in collaboration with Emelie Chhangur, Nasrin Himada and Sunny Kerr.

All events are free. Online registration is required, check the website for details.

Roots & routes
In-person, June 7, 3–6pm
Performance by Montreal-based artist, Kama La Mackerel in Etherington House.

Solstice Party
In-person, June 21, 3–9pm
Brown Butter chefs invite you to spend the year’s longest day at this block party outside Agnes with music, food, artmaking and more. For all ages.

House Party
In-person, July 10, 6–9pm
Etherington House
DJ Scott C closes Brown Butter with a house party full of old-school flavour.

Brown Butter is part of a year-long series of projects staged in Etherington House as part of “Rehoming Agnes.” These projects anticipate our closure and foreshadow our reopening, marking the transition of the house back to its original use as an artist residence. Brown Butter and its related programs are generously supported by the Canada Council of the Arts and the David Bain Memorial Fund, Queen’s University.

Transformations
June 2022–June 2023

“Style writing and graffiti are not about art. For many, it’s about having a voice. A voice that, once bright, erodes, decays and disappears. It is erased by weather, time and status quo. It is about staking monuments in a place that often casts you out.” —Oriah Scott

This summer we host Oriah Scott, EronOne, HONE, HUNGR, AJ Little, Emily May Rose and guest graffiti artists from across the Montreal-Toronto corridor as Agnes’s Stonecroft Foundation Artist(s)-in-Residence. An extended research and design phase culminates in a site-specific commission for the exterior façades of Agnes’s current facility. Transformations remains until the construction for Agnes Reimagined begins in summer 2023.

This reciprocal relationship-building project celebrates the long vernacular tradition of street art in Kingston, points to alternative art histories embedded in our city streets and provides a framework for experiential learning and co-curriculum development conceived in collaboration with faculty and students from Queen’s Art Conservation Program. In the classroom, we trace the lineages of “acts of urban chaos;” in the conservation lab, we consider why certain paint colours fade more quickly; in the gallery, we have honest conversations along the way, exploring the ethics of preserving street art, the conundrum of being an art institution working along-side submerged cultural practices without co-opting them and collectively questioning who benefits from exchanges with imbalanced power dynamics. And we produce the first-ever in-situ graffiti project on the actual architectures of Queen’s!

Curated by Oriah Scott.

The residency, large-scale, site-specific commission and experiential education initiative are conceived and produced by Emelie Chhangur, Agnes Director and Curator in partnership with Patricia Smithen, Assistant Professor, Paintings Conservation and Director, Art Conservation Program, Queens University.

Generously funded by the Stonecroft Foundation and the City of Kingston Arts Fund, Kingston Arts Council.

Continuing exhibitions:
Studies in Solitude: The Art of Depicting Seclusion
To June 26, 2022

The Dark Room
To July 10, 2022

Hidden Currents: Koerner Artist-in-Residence Prints
To July 10, 2022