By Jenny Wagler
It’s hard to say who feels the loss more: Gallery 101 or Centretown.
The artist-run gallery, which for 10 years challenged and delighted its neighbours with vivid contemporary art, lost its Nepean Street location to a condo development at the beginning of summer. And with the gallery in negotiations for a new, non-Centretown location, the loss is looking permanent.
It’s a sordid story of the bottom line. Prohibitive rents coupled with short leases are forcing the non-profit gallery out of the community, says gallery director Leanne L’Hirondelle. So while the gallery still counts Centretown folk amongst its closest supporters – it hasn’t forgotten, for example, community members who volunteered their labour during renovations – it has no choice but to leave.
And Centretown is the less for it. This is a gallery that showcased ambitious, innovative exhibitions across all media. It brought in international and national artists as well as provincial and local talent – recent exhibitions featuring Antonia Hirsch, Pao Quang Yeh, Will Aitken, Althea Thauberger, and Shier Kasai. It reached out to passers-by on Nepean Street with intriguing murals displayed on its outdoor walls. It breathed vision and imagination into a community.
And the loss of Gallery 101 begs further questions. Will Centretown housing prices deter other artists and galleries from joining the community? Does the area offer enough incentives to counter high operating costs? Will any artistic newcomers mitigate the loss of Gallery 101?
The answers look grim.
“Anyone would think twice about opening in Centretown,” says Guy Berube, the owner of La Petite Mort gallery on the eastern edge of Byward Market.
Similarly to Gallery 101, his gallery deals in contemporary, edgy work. In his view, gallery owners tend to opt for “raunchy” neighbourhoods with lower rents. His own location, at the corner of Cumberland and Murray is testament to this theory.
Berube also believes that galleries benefit from clustering – a phenomenon present in the Market area and in Hintonburg and notably lacking in Centretown.
Other elements entice galleries, say owners. Sophisticated restaurants and a well-to-do clientele have made the Hintonburg and Westboro area popular, says Cube gallery owner Don Monet. Five galleries, he says, have opened in the area in the last two years – even if not all have survived.
The lure of Hintonburg has equally whisked other artistic institutions out of Centretown – notably the Ottawa School of Speech and Drama and the Great Canadian Theatre Company.
And so, as Centretown mourns the loss of the iconic, community-rooted Gallery 101, there is a deeper sense of unease. Because as Ottawa’s artistic community looks for location, location, location, it isn’t looking toward Centretown.