It may be cold outdoors, but inside Cube Gallery things are toasty.
In the dead of winter the latest group exhibition to be hosted at the gallery, Warmth, promises to get Ottawa art patrons feeling a little cosier amid all the snow and ice.
“The whole idea of the show is, you know, trying to warm up,” Cube Gallery owner Don Monet said. “We knew it was going to be a cold time of year . . . so the concept is that we want to have a show that warms up the neighbourhood a little bit.”
For lawyer-turned-photographer Ruth Dick, one of the artists being exhibited as part of the group show, Warmth could not have come at a better time of year.
“We’re all a little winter weary at this point,” Dick said. “There’s something satisfying about getting warm and cozy in the peak of winter.”
“[Warmth] isn’t a tropical escape, it’s the kind of warmth you would find and burrow into here while you’re stranded in the snow. I hope that’s what people take away from it,” she said.
Two of Dick’s photographs, “Whisky” and “Maple,” are being exhibited as part of the group show, which opened Jan. 28 and features submissions by her and 13 other artists.
Warmth is the latest in a series of themed exhibitions hosted by the gallery. Past shows include Red, Cottage, and Kindred.
Monet said keeping themes simple lets artists explore them more fully.
“When we put a theme out we try to keep it fairly open so the artist doesn’t feel constrained too much,” he said. “We try to make it sort of a vague idea that they can fall into.”
By keeping an open-ended theme, the group show achieves a huge variety in content. However, at the same time every piece of art remains somehow interrelated.
Victoria Wonnacott, a Montreal-based artist and veteran of Cube Gallery group shows, is another artist featured in Warmth.
One of her works, “Yellow Notes,” is an acrylic painting of a burned yellow page. Beneath the paint, Wonnacott’s self-styled “ramblings” on the colour yellow are visible.
It’s unlike anything else in the show, but it still fits.
Other artworks in the exhibition range from Paul Schibli’s close up painting “Impassioned Warmth,” to Alison Smith-Welsh’s Sex Pistols-inspired sculpture “Holiday In the Sun.”
Overall, in spite of it being a themed show the diversity of Warmth is remarkable.
Monet said he never knows what to expect from submissions for shows like Warmth, but said he is always impressed. He hopes that Ottawa art fans will be too.
“It’s fascinating to see what you end up with,” Monet said. “Now the patron can see, well, this is the key word, what did the artists come up with.”
Cube Gallery hosted its vernissage for Warmth Feb. 2.
The exhibition runs at Cube Gallery until March 2.
