IssColdOnDeebike, currently on view at the Bermuda Society of Arts, marks the first time I have attended an exhibition where every artwork has the same title. Each does so aptly, although each tells a distinct story. Collectively, they reveal that IssColdOnDeebike is not, in fact, about riding a bike. Rather, it is about Bermudians confronting difficulty and admitting vulnerabilities.

Organised by the Centipede Art Movement (CAM) and installed by Michael Walsh and Edwin M.E. Smith, the gallery at the Bermuda Society of Arts gives voice to each artist’s interpretation of these vulnerabilities.

Such candour is typical of the Centipede Art Movement, a collective formed by students of Bermuda College in 2014.

The movement challenges artists to take risks and acknowledge the afflictions of contemporary life. It has no fixed roster or leadership. Like a centipede, it has no head and many legs.

For this exhibition, CAM asked artists to explore a common sentiment. “Saying ‘IssColdOnDeeBike,’ means you grew up in Bermuda,” Mr Smith explains, recalling one-car households and the shock of cold each winter.

Mr Walsh, similarly, notes that acknowledging the cold ride is one instance when Bermudians openly share their personal struggles.

Artists responded in both literal and metaphorical ways, producing an exhibition unconcerned with safe imagery or an optimistic view of paradise, what Walsh describes as the “postcarding” of Bermuda.

Instead, in their own way, each artist aimed for an honest, resonant, and personal expression of Bermudian life.

Smith’s own IssColdOnDeeBike conveys the sensation of the ride, but also the need for shelter from the rain, literally and figuratively. Composed of shifting, monochromatic frames that coalesce into a composite scene, his painting shows a rider pausing at a bus shelter along Middle Road.

Slivers of landscape function as a visual haiku, accumulating into a quiet call for refuge and optimism. James Cook likewise locates his figures at a bus stop, where the claustrophobic space heightens the tension of unspoken racial tensions.

Loneliness, a recurring occurrence in the show, takes a darker, more heart-wrenching turn in Jahbari Wilson’s mural-scale installation.

Constructed from interwoven cardboard pieces, the material evokes the detritus of our mail-order world. The painted subject confronts the viewer with the image of violence, using well-conceived symbolism to suggest the inevitable result when society ignores its youth.

Wilson’s horse — a zoomorphic stand-in for the bike — runs amok with two gunmen in anonymous black helmets on its back.

The riders shoot with multiple arms, like a Bermudian version of the Hindu god Shiva, the Destroyer. Wilson carefully researched the figurative components (gloves, guns) to communicate the real cost of a disengaged generation raised by Western media influences.

In Wilson’s reading, an untended societal vulnerability challenges the view of paradise.

Walsh’s contribution addresses isolation from another angle, showing the reality behind the postcard.

His horizontal composition pictures individuals standing in Shelley Bay, evenly spaced and facing the viewer.

Although he paints multiple figures, his painting speaks to isolation in a community small enough to breed familiarity.

Beneath the lower edge of the canvas, almost hidden from view, the artist has written, “The most Bermudian thing is the loneliness we deny.”

(Ironically, many of the models surprised him by attending the gallery opening to support him.)

Another depiction of loneliness comes from Sidney Mello, who focuses on the solitary rather than separation.

The artist’s self-portrait occupies only one corner of the painting’s vertical format. As he turns from the viewer, he thrusts a cell phone behind him, reminding the viewer of the feeling of isolation technology can generate.

The sensation is palpable, conveyed through the richly textured surface, reminiscent of the rough, island stone.

While darkness cloaks the figure, the viewer, too, is easily lost in its visually compelling surface.

Antoine Hunt’s gallery installation likewise references the island’s surrounding textures and materials.

His work consists of a free-standing door and a sprawling piece of driftwood, both about 7 feet tall. At first, the forms seem evocative but ambiguous. This door, although undeniably a portal, seems to lead nowhere.

Both the refined, crafted door and the raw, scavenged wood, however, are forms of cedar. Historically, cedar provided the island with economic stability.

It built the Bermuda sloops, and its beams hold up houses. The cedar blight in the 1940s destroyed most of the island's cedars, which Hunt, in turn, refigures as a historical and collective hardship.

Not all of the compositions dwell on loneliness or loss. Jayde Gibbons, in her interactive installation, invites the viewer to consider the Bermudian’s everyday existence, not as part of the tourist or financial industries, but as members of a generational community.

The easy chair, television set, and photographs of family and public figures recreate the same refuge as Smith’s Middle Road bus stop, while also illustrating the island’s resilience and continuity.

Louisa Bermingham’s vibrant landscape likewise focuses on resolve woven into daily practice.

Next to Gibbons’s mundane reality hangs Gherdai Hassell’s multimedia work embodying Bermudians’ fierce beauty.

Hassell’s onion-toting bike rider, decked in gold from head to toe, looks out from her glittering sunglasses to heroically challenge whatever obstacle arises.

Using techniques more reminiscent of medieval churches or crown jewels, Hassell provides the counterpart to other works in the exhibit. It may be “coldondeebike,” but this rider will persevere.

The range of Bermudian-fuelled expressions, from the truly scintillating or comforting to the desolate or isolated, allows for a complex expression of Bermudian life.

In some works, like Hunt’s installation, the physicality dominates and drives the story. Such is also the case with Kim Dismont-Robinson’s use of encaustic to show the intersection of technology and nature by creating a durable, reflective surface, almost fossilising the subject.

Jordon Carey’s kite form, made from dyed paper pulp, connects to the past through historical imagery and the virtuoso manipulation of a fundamental artistic method, papermaking.

All interpretations thematically augment the collective experience. Eira McHugh captures the bleakness of being alone and rain-soaked. The Healer pleads for a safer day.

And, Josiah Darrell, in his sculpture with internally displayed images, reminds viewers that loss may be present but hidden from view.

Jordon McConnie addresses the perennial destruction wrought by storms, while Cyniqua Anderson shows the accelerated decay resulting from the air and rampant flora of a subtropical world.

Shanna Hollis and Yesha Townsend install a gallery of helmets sporting layers of bespoke stickers, a contemporary poem about sharing the road.

As a whole, the exhibition certainly testifies to the depth of the Bermudian experience, behind the postcard and below the surface. But it shows more, according to Mr Smith: “Artists in Bermuda have something to say, and they’re not afraid to use their voice.”