The Queer NHL

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Lucas Morneau, “Queer Newfoundland Hockey League,” 2023

installation view at Kamloops Art Gallery (photo by Graeme Wahn)

An antidote for the winter blues is at hand: Lucas Morneau’s hot pinks . . . plus all the other colours in the rainbow. 

Stepping into Queer Newfoundland Hockey League (QNHL), on view until April 1 at the Kamloops Art Gallery in the B.C. Interior, is like a quick trip to Disneyland. The “drunk-tank pink” that Morneau specified for the gallery walls situates their hand-crocheted hockey jerseys deep in fantasy space. And when you see the team names on those jerseys and check out the trading cards in the vitrine (next to goalie “facemasks” as fancy as granny’s doilies) you know something is up.

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Lucas Morneau, “Dildo Dykes,” 2020

crocheted and rug-hooked wool yarn on burlap, 36” x 30” (photo by Graeme Wahn)

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Lucas Morneau, “Gayside Gaylords,” 2021

crocheted and rug-hooked wool yarn on burlap, 36” x 30” (photo by Graeme Wahn)

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Morneau’s deliciously cheeky humour is subversive. Team names like the Come By Chance Flamers, the Leading Tickles Lesbos and the Gayside Gaylords take a poke at hockey’s hegemonic hyper-masculinity by marrying homophobic locker-room slurs with the comical names of Newfoundland towns. 

Sending up hockey, one of the foundational pillars of Canadian identity, could be a tricky high-wire act. But Irish author Anne Enright’s phrase, “holding the despising glance while sabotaging it,” perfectly describes what’s at play in queer culture: shaming insinuations lose their sting when homophobic epithets are embraced and mischievously flaunted.

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Lucas Morneau, “Harry Cox,” 2021

offset lithographic print, artist proof, 2.5” x 3.5” (courtesy the artist)

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Lucas Morneau, “Gay Gaylord,” 2021

offset lithographic print, artist proof, 2.5” x 3.5” (courtesy the artist)

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This show has its roots in Morneau’s business cards, which are styled like trading cards. Expanding the concept to an imaginary hockey league meant crocheting 14 team jerseys for player photos, along with a goalie’s face mask for each team. At a month per sweater, that’s a lot of needlework. Morneau mentions the toll this took on their body: their forearms and neck still ache. Their observation that artists often sacrifice their health to create work curiously echoes the expectation that athletes must risk injury to win a game.

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Lucas Morneau, “Goalie Doilies,” 2021

crocheted cotton yarn and plaster, installation view at the Kamloops Art Gallery (courtesy Graeme Wahn)

For all the send-up humor and social activism that is knit, er, crocheted into this critique, Morneau talks hockey with familiar ease. Their Canadian credentials are as secure as their centuries-deep Newfoundland identity, courtesy of the maternal clan on Bonavista Bay, along the Rock’s northeastern coast. 

Although Morneau is not a hockey player, family members played for the Corner Brook Royals and Morneau’s Corner Brook Queens adopt the crown from their namesake’s logo. Another nod to Newfoundland culture is the rug-hooking technique Morneau used to make the jersey logos. They recall so-called Grenfell rugs, a folk craft initiated by Wilfred Grenfell, a British-born doctor, as a salve to regional poverty and hunger in the early 1900s.

While Morneau acknowledges a playful approach is just one of many artistic strategies for addressing harms caused by hegemonic masculinity, they like the role of jester, engaging viewers with humour to shine light on the dark side of hockey culture. Morneau’s critique is timely, as ongoing news reports reveal the harrowing physical and emotional toll on players and fans, as well as the financial costs of concealing various sexual abuse scandals. 

The show’s curator, Craig Willms, booked the show as a counterpoint to the Canadian Hockey League’s Memorial Cup playoffs, which take place in Kamloops from May 26 to June 4. No doubt hockey fever will be at a hot-pink pitch by then. ■

Lucas Morneau: Queer Newfoundland Hockey League (QNHL) at the Kamloops Art Gallery from Jan. 14 to April 1, 2023.

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