Saturday 21 December
-10°C and Broken Clouds
Another milestone: Agnes is closed to the public as we prepare for Agnes Reimagined. Stay tuned for plans for off-site programming!
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A reopening, a reception, a performance!
Jessie Oonark, Untitled, around 1970, wool felt and cotton thread. Gift of Guardian Capital Group Limited, 2020. Photo: Bernard Clark. Public Trustee for Nunavut, Estate of Jessie Oonark
Sign up for the public reception
This event is free; everyone is welcome!
Don’t miss this occasion to come together and celebrate Agnes’s reopening! NEW: Listen to Mohawk singer-songwriter Logan Staats give two performances during the reception: 5:45-6:15 pm and 7:15–7:45 pm.
Emergence: A Recent Gift of Indigenous Art highlights important early and mid-career works of art by Malaya Akulukjuk, Kenojuak Ashevak, Irene Avaalaaqiaq, Robert Houle, Alex Janvier, Norval Morrisseau, Jessie Oonark and Parr, among others. As a collection, their works provide a cohesive vision of the approaches and concerns of artists working in the 1970s. The exhibition delves into the artists’ chosen materials and techniques that resulted in art forms championed through established community centres, craft guilds, and art galleries. Both emerging and elder artists experimented with a variety of media—across drawings, paintings, prints, sculpture, and textiles. In doing so, they shaped new artistic markets and became influential advocates and innovators in the field of contemporary and Indigenous art, forging paths for future generations of artists.
On public view at Agnes for the first time, don’t miss your chance to see these works.
Refreshments are available with remarks around 6:30 pm. We hope you come and celebrate with us!
Accomplished, multi-nominated and award-winning Mohawk singer-songwriter Logan Staats will perform two sets during the reception: 5:45-6:15 pm and 7:15–7:45 pm.
In 2018, veracious Mohawk singer-songwriter Logan Staats was chosen from 10,000 hopeful contestants vying for a spot on musical competition show The Launch. Before an audience of 1.4 million viewers, Staats won, officiating the breakthrough that would lead him to Nashville and Los Angeles, and to his single “The Lucky Ones” winning the Indigenous Music Award for Best Radio Single. “The Lucky Ones” also placed #1 in Canada.
In the years between now and then, Staats has come home, making the intentional decision to re-root at Six Nations of the Grand River. “I wanted to bring my songwriting back to the medicine inside of music, to the medicine inside of reclamation,” he says following a phase of constant travel and intensity.
To Staats, music is a healing salve, contemplatively composed and offered to listeners in need of comfort. Since returning home, Staats has been able to create music authentically again, reclaiming his sound through honest storytelling and unvarnished, sometimes painful reflection.
An evocative testament to rock’s cathartic spirit, the album was recorded with borrowed microphones at Staats’ apartment, at Six Nations recording studio Jukasa, and at downtown Brantford’s Sanderson Centre for the Performing Arts.
“My nation and my community are in every chord I play and every note I sing,” says Staats. “They’ve saved me.”
