{"id":37356,"date":"2025-12-11T15:12:37","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T20:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=37356"},"modified":"2025-12-11T15:12:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T20:12:49","slug":"winter-musings-thought-provoking-pop-art-on-show-at-aurora-cultural-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/winter-musings-thought-provoking-pop-art-on-show-at-aurora-cultural-centre\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter musings, thought-provoking pop art on show at Aurora Cultural Centre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Aurora Cultural Centre marked something of a homecoming on Thursday evening as the works of several artists, many of whom got their start in the historic Church Street School, came together for musings on women and winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Centre celebrated the openings of \u201cForever-22\u201d, an exhibition by up-and-coming local artist Julia Mobbs, who was the Centre\u2019s artist-in-residence this past fall, and \u201cWhat Does a Winter\u2019s Night Hold?\u201d showcasing the work of the Centre\u2019s artist-instructors, with an evening putting these creators firmly in the spotlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mobbs, whose work first graced the walls of the Aurora Cultural Centre when she was a high school student participating in the Centre\u2019s annual Mayor\u2019s Celebration of Youth Arts, is a graduate of Concordia University, and uses her paintbrush to focus on images from popular media, archived magazines, leisure culture, and more, as a way to \u201cchallenge the human form and consumer processes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Centre\u2019s Fall Artist in Residence, she created the entirety of her exhibition while participating in the program, and her work can be found throughout their ground floor gallery space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking to how her work evolved through the residency program, she said the concept of how women are depicted in advertising has always captured her imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in advertising and consumerism and especially the role that the imagery of women plays in advertising,\u201d she said, when asked how her work evolved during the residency program. \u201cI\u2019m trying to marry those concepts together because sometimes, at least before I was approaching them from just pictures of women or just pictures of advertising imagery.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of my paintings start with some sort of imagery that\u2019s already been produced,\u201d she continued, outlining her non-traditional take on collage work where she brings images together through her brush rather than a more traditional cut-and-paste approach. \u201cI do collage, but it\u2019s not the traditional way of pasting. I do that too, but sometimes in my head I just put together imagery and end up painting it, so I think of collage as just any sort of found imagery and I like to reinterpret that in painting and see how that image gets transformed. I find that\u2019s the beauty because replicating imagery\u2026I don\u2019t really see why if it\u2019s already been produced, why should I repaint it again? I guess my perspective is to try to transform it through painting.\u201d
Mobbs\u2019 vision for her exhibition, she said, was guided in part by being \u201cimmersed\u201d in Montreal\u2019s arts scene. At the time of the opening, titles of each work had not yet been added to the walls beside each painting \u2013 a practice that is more conventional there than at the Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good to have a title sometimes, it adds to the beauty of the piece, but sometimes I find it can take away if people are overly interested in finding a reason why this painting was made, or it can take away from the audience experience of the work,\u201d she explained. \u201cI do really enjoy making titles for my pieces, but sometimes I find the descriptions and such can take away from the reading.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the Aurora Cultural Centre provided Mobbs one of the first opportunities to display her art as a student, it also provided new avenues for local artists looking to share their craft with others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These artists are at the heart of \u201cWhat Does a Winter Night Hold?\u201d showcasing the works of Centre instructors Katie Argyle, Annwin Arts, Alex Bhatia, Anni Bretschneider, Jessie Chui, Eva Folks, Karin Foulds, Jing Fu, Golbahar H., Arnold Koch, Karen Levert, Liana Marinelli, Michelle Richards\u2013Clermont, Judy Sherman, and Helen Walter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curated by Anna Vander Heide, the Aurora Cultural Centre\u2019s Interim Education Manager, the show \u201ccaptures the spirit of the winter; reflecting family gatherings, holiday traditions, and the warmth that carries us through the season.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week\u2019s opening provided several of the artists an opportunity to speak to their work, and Helen Walter said becoming an instructor when the Centre first opened in 2010 helped her develop her own approaches and practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been drawing since I was four-years-old but that doesn\u2019t count,\u201d she joked. \u201cWhen it came to painting [with young students] what I found was better than painting myself, and this moves into painting with adults, and that\u2019s being part of the discovery, being part of what makes a painting. I had a woman come to me one day at a show and she said, \u2018Oh, I\u2019d love to paint. It must be so relaxing.\u2019 No, no, no, it\u2019s decision-making. It\u2019s, pardon me, fu—ing up and not knowing how to fix it and\u2026it\u2019s finding your own answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe kids find their own answers. The students find their own answers, and you\u2019ve been an agent, an observer\u2026. it\u2019s like being a producer and the best movie just played. Yes, your credit isn\u2019t there, but they did it and, in some small way, so did you \u2013 and it\u2019s thrilling. It\u2019s more thrilling to see other people\u2019s work than it is to see mine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To see the works on show now at the Aurora Cultural Centre, both shows run until January 25. For more information, visit auroraculturalcentre.ca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Aurora Cultural Centre marked something of a homecoming on Thursday evening as the works of several artists, many of whom got their start in the historic Church Street School, came together for musings on women and winter. The Centre celebrated the openings of \u201cForever-22\u201d, an exhibition by up-and-coming local artist Julia Mobbs, who was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-12-11-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9Iw","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 04:44:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37358,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37356\/revisions\/37358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}