Offsite Exhibitions | Modern Fuel

Off-Site Exhibitions

WHITE PINE TRAVELS: AT THE BROOM FACTORY

Noah Scheinman

Broom Factory

September 4th - November 1st

White Pine Travels: At the Broom Factory is the first instalment of White Pine Travels, a mobile architectural pavilion designed by multidisciplinary artist Noah Scheinman. The structure will eventually travel to Ottawa and through the Ottawa Valley to Algonquin Provincial Park, where the timber used in the artwork’s construction was originally harvested in the late 19th century. In Kingston, the pavilion will sit at the north end of the Broom Factory parking lot, framing views of the urban woods to the north and adjacent to the former railway that once passed through the site.

Equal parts large-scale sculpture, community gathering space, and travelling outdoor cinema, the pavilion reworks vernacular architectures into a platform for collective reflection, forest stewardship, and creative experimentation. Made primarily from old-growth white pine reclaimed from the depths of the Ottawa River, the project engages the rich histories and complex narratives embedded in the material—offering a journey into the past to better understand the future while reflecting on the present.

Always open and free to the public as a space for quiet contemplation, White Pine Travels will also be activated at select times through artist-led forest walks, film screenings, short talks, and workshops. These programs consider the region’s entangled natural and industrial histories while proposing new environmental imaginaries in response to ecological precarity and climate breakdown.

At the Broom Factory is realized in partnership with the Kingston Canadian Film Festival, Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, and RAW Architects Inc. It is generously supported by the City of Kingston Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Belle Park Project.

Noah Scheinman

Noah Scheinman is a multidisciplinary artist who makes research-based work at the intersection of cultural history, technology, and the environment. He recently founded S.E.D.I.M.E.N.T.S, a creative studio exploring the interplay between research and practice, art and architecture, laboratory and field. Engaging both conceptual and material-driven approaches, S.E.D.I.M.E.N.T.S realizes artworks, films, and designs that explore questions of landscape through multiple theoretical lenses and methodological approaches. Ongoing projects include Timber Limits, an investigation of forests, the cultural trope of “wilderness,” and the governance of the timber industry, and BAD EARTH, which materializes Canada’s Postnuclear Landscape through a cycle of film-essays and sculptural installations.

Echoes: Reimagining Murney Tower

Jill Glatt, Géorgie Gagné, Roberto Santaguida,

Gabriel Menotti, Nancy Douglas, and Monique Martin

Main Gallery at Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre

April 1st - 30th

Murney Tower Museum

May 17th - August 30th

To the Soundless Gun: A Critical Silence

Curatorial Essay by Marcus Young

The thirty-two-pounder gun sitting at the crown of Murney Tower is a practical and symbolic artefact that echoes the rich military history of Katarokwi-Kingston. Its gun faces the open water, defending Kingston from invasion, but it met no heat of battle.

As Murney Tower celebrates its museum’s 100th anniversary, this exhibition is mounted to revisit the tower’s history–but can the tower tell us more than just conflict? The artworks exhibited reflect on its rich and complex past through critical dialogue about people, experience, and decolonisation.

Six artists reinvigorate the present experience of the tower and how we read its history. Douglas foregrounds the tower-as-sentry, as it has been, and over time has protected more than just military interests; the tower has been fertile ground for the meeting of community, people, and creature. The vibrancy of Douglas’ large-scale collage is highlighted through the intersection of the Crown, its government and military, and the communities whose stories have marked Murney Point.

Menotti reimagines the tower as an instrument, but not of war. His play on the military’s horn to rouse troops has turned into a horn that reverberates the sound of birds and waves. The inverted tower invites spectators to reconsider assumptions about the fortification. Muting its colours, especially its iconic red roof, Menotti centres attention to what one hears around the tower, shifting focus from the hardness of its architecture to the softness of nature’s call.

Santaguida reflects upon a personal letter that narrates for us stories from within the tower’s walls. Time is questioned in this moving installation and how the tower, an imposing force, is swept by the to and fro of time’s own passing. Murney Tower was engineered to stand for power in the past, but whose power shapes its story in the present?

A sincere connectivity is introduced by Gagné and Glatt through their beaded circle, and they pose a resonating question of ‘what could be?’ if the tower had not been built. Murney Tower was erected as a mechanism to ward off unwanted visitors, but in this installation a reciprocal relationship is privileged where the tower and the land are meant to connect, not separate. Like a Wampum Belt’s uninterrupted line of beads and tiles, this artwork reimagines a shared responsibility.

Martin seemingly dismantles the fortification, and we are let in to experience the tower differently. Murney Tower’s red roof is lifted synchronously, reminding us of the time when a roof tile struck a young boy, leading to the museum’s creation. The shifting tiles in Martin’s work connote a movement of meaning, and a movement that oscillates between its past and the values that we, contemporary visitors, imbue it with.

The gun that sits silent on Murney Tower’s crown, an important yet absent object from this exhibition, makes no sounding charge, no roar of violence, yet we hear the echoing waves of memory that is enlivened by art.

Photography by Shanique Peart of The Candid Creative Co.