Dr Amber Rose Johnson reads from 'Bounty', introduction by Steve McQueen

Following an introduction by Steve McQueen, there will be a live reading of Dionne Brand’s poem ‘beauty’ by Dr Amber Rose Johnson. After the event, McQueen will be signing copies of the book.

compiles photographs by McQueen of Grenada’s plant life taken on a trip in the summer of 2024. These images trace the relationship between landscape and historical trauma, transforming Grenada’s flowers and plants into markers of beauty in a land ravaged by exploitation.

Taking as his touchpoint the late Saint Lucian poet Derek Walcott’s elegy to his mother, ‘The Bounty’, McQueen’s project adopts a similarly poetic sensibility, attuned to the resilience of the island’s landscape and the dualities of the word ‘bounty’, which alludes to both the generosity of nature and the sum paid to slave catchers.

Steve McQueen is a film director, film producer, screenwriter and artist based in London and Amsterdam. Surveys of McQueen’s work have been held at the Art Institute of Chicago (2012); Schaulager, Münchenstein (2013); Tate Modern, London (2020); and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2022). He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Turner Prize (1999); the WEB Du Bois Medal, Harvard University (2014); and the Johannes Vermeer Award (2016). McQueen directed the feature films Hunger (2008), Shame (2011), 12 Years a Slave (2013), Widows (2018), and Blitz (2024); the documentary Occupied City (2023); the series Small Axe (2020), an anthology of five films shown on the BBC and Amazon; and Uprising (2021), a three-part documentary series for the BBC. McQueen won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes Film Festival for Hunger in 2008, and an Oscar for Best Motion Picture for 12 Years a Slave in 2014.

Amber Rose Johnson is a writer, scholar, and cultural worker from Providence, Rhode Island. She lives in Tio'tia:ke/Montréal and works as an Assistant Professor of English at McGill University. Her critical and creative practices emerge at the intersection of Black diasporic feminisms, anticolonial philosophy, poetry, and performance. She is the co-editor of Colored People Time (Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia). Her writing can be found in ArtForum, Jacket2, BOMB Literary Magazine, and is forthcoming in Liquid Blackness. She is working on her first monograph, Bad Mathematics.

N.B. This event is free and open to the public, though advance registration is encouraged. Please note priority will be given to those who have registered in advance, though advance registration does not guarantee admission once the event reaches capacity. Please arrive early to avoid disappointment.