If you haven’t paid a visit to the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University — now might be the time to do so.
The gallery has changed almost everything with seven new exhibitions. An official launch for its “winter season” took place on Thursday night.
Alicia Boutilier, interim centre director and chief curator, says the feature exhibition is called, “The Pathos of Mandy”, by Canadian and artist in residence Walter Scott.
“Scott’s work explores this slippery state between fiction and reality and the identity of the artist with playful and interdisciplinary works that draw on comics and videography and also drawings.”
Another new exhibition, called “Face of the Sky”, features a constellation of artworks from across the collections at the Agnes, Boutilier says.
“Contemporary artworks, Inuit artworks and works from our African historical collection and our Canadian historical collection, and it traces the on-going fascination with the sky.”
Yet another of the new exhibitions is entitled “B-“Side by Paul Litherland. Boutilier says the Montreal-based photographer had unprecedented access to the little-seen “back-sides” of paintings from the Agnes historical European collection.
“Visitors to the gallery can see in highly realistic detail the labels on the back of the painting and the conservation work that’s gone into the painting and the framing and the various hardware — it really tells the history of that painting as an object,” Boutilier says.
“It’s highly realistic to the extent that we have to ensure that our visitors don’t touch them and try to peel off some of the labels.”
Other exhibitions include “From Tudor to Hanover” — British portraits from 1590 to 1800 — as well as the “Quest for Colour”, Five Centuries of Innovation in Printmaking.