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Power Play: Hockey In Contemporary Art

Power Play: Hockey in Contemporary Art is an online art exhibition curated by Jacyln Meloche. The exhibition, comprised of various photographs, installations, and paintings, calls into question the complicated relationship between hockey, gender, and race.

Guest Curated by Jaclyn Meloche

Thursday, October 4th to December 31st, 2021

Group exhibition: Judy Anderson, Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf, Scott Conarroe, Adrienne Crossman, Barrie Jones, Cyndra MacDowall, Hazel Meyer, Laura Millard, Kent Monkman, François Morelli, Didier Morelli, Liz Pead, Liss Platt and Victor Romão.

Zoom Reception:

Date: October 21st, 7 pm to 8 pm

Register for the online reception

Exhibition Statement

Power Play: Hockey in Contemporary Art provokes a timely inquiry into the histories and politics of exclusivity embedded within hockey. Inspired by the idea that hockey is much more diverse than the popular stereotypes have led contemporary society to believe, the exhibition calls into question the complicated relationships between hockey, gender, and race. Drawing from sociologist Jean Harvey’s argument that hockey is metaphorical, Power Play exemplifies how the material culture of hockey contemplates new narratives for identity politics in popular culture.

In an online space, Power Play presents the works of 14 artists who all explore hockey as a catalyst for instigating conversations surrounding nationalism, gender and racial equity, physical and mental health, and the value of self-esteem. Through four distinct themes–hockey masks, hockey cards, hockey jerseys, and hockey equipment–the metaphorical and mythological connotations that surround the sport become the subjects of critical debate.

At the core of Power Play is a desire to challenge gender and racial intolerance as well as the patterns of omission within professional sports. Through hockey and the themes considered in the exhibition, the underlying goal is, therefore, to question the culture of difference within the game.

Judy Anderson

At the core of Judy Anderson’s work is a desire to hold others in high esteem by demonstrating respect—honour—for the values and teachings that are at the root of Plains Cree intellectualizations of the world. Drawing on Indigenous teachings, knowledge and methodologies, Anderson creates work that honors the people in her life. This one brings me the most pride honors her youngest child, her son Riel who, when he was thirteen years old, believed that hockey was his life. The piece was created to first honor Riel, demonstrate his importance, and make visible the respect he deserved as an Indigenous child who lived, breathed, and ate hockey. No longer a child whose life is dedicated to hockey, Riel has embraced other interests beyond hockey, although he remains a fan of the game–(Go Jets Go).

An otter pelt extends down from a goalie mask and lays on a white plinth. Overtop is a clear Plexi glass neck guard with blue beaded letters that spell the name “Riel”. Above the pelt is an otter skin goalie mask with Indigenous flag imagery and red maple leaves. The face cage of the mask is beaded in rainbow colours. Two images of this sculpture are presented, showing a front facing view and an oblique angled view of the work

Judy Anderson (Calgary, Alberta)
This one brings me the most pride, 2016
beads, moose hide, goalie helmet, Plexi neck guard, otter pelt
Courtesy of the Artist

Same as before, slight angle difference. Description repeated. An otter pelt extends down from a goalie mask and lays on a white plinth. Overtop is a clear Plexi glass neck guard with blue beaded letters that spell the name “Riel”. Above the pelt is an otter skin goalie mask with Indigenous flag imagery and red maple leaves. The face cage of the mask is beaded in rainbow colours. Two images of this sculpture are presented, showing a front facing view and an oblique angled view of the work.

Judy Anderson (Calgary, Alberta)
This one brings me the most pride, 2016
beads, moose hide, goalie helmet, Plexi neck guard, otter pelt
Courtesy of the Artist

Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf

Peinture canadianne is an ongoing series of installations that comprise 3000 hockey cards arranged to mimic the patterns and trends of Canadian abstract painting from the 1940s and 1950s. Recalling the aesthetics of canonical works by artists, such as Jean-Paul Riopelle, this monumental fresco made of disposable and collectible everyday objects is a pastiche of brush strokes, colour, and scale. In the context of Power Play: Hockey in Canadian Contemporary Art, Peinture canadianne translates into an extra-large portrait that frames the faces of hockey’s past, moments of hyper-masculinity, elaborate styles of facial hair, stereotypical hockey helmet hairstyles, and action-filled facial expressions. Peppered with humour, the work is both an homage to the history of hockey’s mass production in popular culture as well as a tribute to the speed of the game. Instead of overlapping thick impasto brushstrokes on canvas, Phaneuf layers hockey cards onto a white wall to resemble the speed and ephemerality of gestural painting.

Exhibition installation photograph of a large rectangular abstract collage comprising over one thousand individual hockey cards. In front of the collage is a viewing bench

Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf
Peinture canadienne (Riopelle), since 2013
Collected hockey cards and tape
457.2 x 548.64 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

Installation photo of collage from an angled perspective. In the foreground, the overlapping hockey cards are visible with predominantly red, yellow, blue, and white colours. The perspective of the image fades toward the background.

Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf
Peinture canadienne (Riopelle), since 2013
Collected hockey cards and tape
457.2 x 548.64 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

A detail of the large abstract collage fills the frame showcasing hundreds of hockey cards. Here, the cards can be seen as having been laid in a subtle pattern of concentric circles starting from the centre of the image. The cards overlap haphazardly, some images on angles, some upside down. A few images on the cards stick out randomly, like a close-up of a hockey player’s face near the centre of the collage, a player celebrating a win near the left of the collage, and a goalie near the right of the collage.

Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf
Peinture canadienne (Riopelle), since 2013
Collected hockey cards and tape
457.2 x 548.64 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

Installation image of four collages of NHL goalies positioned overtop reproductions of abstract paintings by Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Kurt Schwitters. The four works hang in a horizontal row overtop a display case.

Close-up photo of the image on the far left of the display. The hockey image takes up the top third of the page, showing goalie Mike Vernon wearing a white and red jersey. His legs are splayed out to the sides and his stick is outstretched in his left hand to defend the goal. His image is collaged overtop a reproduction of Robert Motherwell’s painting entitled Elegy to the Spanish Republic from 1965-1967. Below, on the far right side of the image is a text column that describes Motherwell’s painting.

Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf
Mike Vernon on Robert Motherwell (de la série Goalies on Art), 2015)
Collage, pages de livres
29.1 x 24.3 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

Close-up photo of the image on the far left of the display. The hockey image takes up the top third of the page, showing goalie Patrick Roy wearing a white, red, and blue jersey. Roy is photographed in the act of catching a puck. His image is collaged overtop a reproduction of Mark Rothko’s painting entitled Yellow and Gold from 1956. Below the image are two text columns that describes Rothko’s painting.

Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf
Patrick Roy on Mark Rothko (de la sérieGoalies on Art), 2015
Collage, pages de livres
30.3 x 22.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist
Photo : Guy L’Heureux

Close-up photo of the image on the far left of the display. The hockey image takes up the top third of the page, showing goalie Tom Barrasso wearing a red, white, and blue jersey. Barrasso’s image is collaged overtop a reproduction of a Kurt Schwitters painting.

Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf
Tom Barrasso on Kurt Schwitters (de la série Goalies on Art), 2015
Collage, pages de livres
29.1 x 24.2 cm
Courtesy of the Artist
Photo : Guy L’Heureux

Presented inside a glass vitrine are twelve black and white magazine reproductions of violence and fighting in hockey. Overtop each brawl, the artist has drawn an animated explosion, each in a different bright colour, such as pink, red, yellow, purple, and green. Below each image is a text describing the brawl depicted in the image.

Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf
Études préparatoires. Dessins d’explosions, 2013- 2015
Crayons de bois sure pages de livres
30.3 x 22.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist
Photo : Guy L’Heureux

Scott Conarroe

Scott Conarroe’s Shinny Rink, Halifax, Mall Rink, Anchorage, AK, and Skating Pond, Yellow Lake, BC are from a larger series of photographs entitled At Leisure (2003-2012). Reflecting on the concept of free time, and the kinds of activities that people engage with outside of work and domestic chores, photo-based artist Scott Conarroe explores the notion that leisure, also known as “free-time” is never fully free. Through images of skating rinks, tennis courts, and public parks, the artist contemplates the ways in which spaces of leisure also signal spaces in which activities might not be completely free of choice because they are often constrained by social pressures or the influence of others. In these three photographs, Conarroe contemplates the rink as a symbol for the commodification of leisure. A place typically associated with Canada’s famous winter sport–hockey–Conarroe’s three depictions of frozen water dissect the social, economic, and historical relationships between place, leisure, and the ways in which hockey constructs an identity politic–whether through peer pressure, expectation, or the love of the game. For example, Shinny Rink, Halifax NS depicts the seasonal void that exists between foreground shovels and distant smokestacks.Mall Rink, Anchorage AK frames a National Guard recruiting office looming in the background, and Skating Pond, Yellow Lake, BC, 2009 highlights the number of passes it took to clear a “skateable” area of ice on a frozen pond where a subsequent cleaning was deemed “good enough”.

Photograph of a frozen lake in winter, covered in snow, with dark coniferous trees in the background. On the right side of the image there is a rectangular portion of the ice that has been cleared, exposing dark blue ice with faint white markings from skates. A portion of this cleared patch of ice is still covered with a faint dusting of snow. There are faint markings of skate blades in the snow walking toward/away from the cleared ice.

Scott Conarroe
Skating Pond (Yellow Lake BC), 2009
Archival pigment print
76.2 x 101.6 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

place holder image

Scott Conarroe
Mall Rink (Anchorage AK), 2010
Archival pigment print
76.2 x 101.6 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

This photograph captures a smooth, homemade ice rink in the middle of a neighborhood which is currently empty and still. The rink is surrounded by chain link metal fencing, and there are bright orange pilons on the left foreground corner of the rink. In the background are houses with rooftops gently covered with snow. One long fuzzy cloud streaks across the sky, coloured with pale yellow, orange, and blue as the sun rises.

Scott Conarroe
Shinny Rink (Halifax NS), 2005
Archival pigment print
76.2 x 101.6 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

Adrienne Crossman

No Future’s pink and black hockey jersey references queer theorist Lee Edelman’s nihilistic text about queers and the death drive as well as that of the punk mantra (à la Sex Pistols). By questioning the ways in which mainstream cultural memory frames the histories and so-called official narratives that influence the masses, Crossman offers a timely critique of homophobia within professional sports, such as hockey. Sports’ culture, like punk culture, is predominantly authored by European decent heterosexual males, regardless of the impacts made by women, queer people, and people of colour. Building on their desire to challenge the game’s history of exclusivity in the West, Crossman deploys imagery and symbolism to question sexuality in sports.

The floral engraved mirror is a nod to the gay flower language of the Victorian era, a symbolic vernacular through which gay men and lesbians were able to communicate and identify one another while in plain sight of heterosexual society. Subsequently, the pennant serves as a subversion of its historical use in sports and fan culture while calling for a deviation away from dominant and singular historical narratives. In the context of Crossman’s installation, the variety of objects and images work together as queer acts of defiance and conversion. By rendering the familiarity [of the hockey player] unfamiliar, the assemblage-turned-installation destabilizes the narratives of exclusivity that sports culture continues to perpetuate through a symbolic shift.

 

Close-up image of the triangular bunting flag that says “Deviate” in pink letters on a white background

Adrienne Crossman
No Future, 2018
Hockey jersey, mirrored Plexiglass, felt
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the Artist

Barrie Jones

Hockey Shots is a series of ten photographs by photo-based artist Barrie Jones (Vancouver) in which he questions the relationships between hockey, masking, and Canadian identity. Between 1973-1979, Jones photographed himself wearing a 1960’s inspired white goalie mask and a red and blue hockey sweater in front of incomparable landmarks around the world. In Power Play Photograph of a man in a red jersey holding a hockey stick, whose face is completely covered by a traditional white goalie mask with holes for the eyes. The man stands in a rectangular stone cavern inside The Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut in Egypt.

Barrie Jones (Vancouver, British Columbia)
Hatshepsut's Temple, Egypt, 1974
from the series Hockey Shots
Cibachrome print
Collection of the Art Gallery of Windsor
Gift of the Artist, 1998
1988.009

Photograph of a man in a red jersey holding a hockey stick, whose face is completely covered by a traditional white goalie mask with holes for the eyes. The man is standing in front of Lake Louise, a turquoise glacial lake, with snow covered mountains in the background.

Barrie Jones (Vancouver, BC)
At Lake Louise, Banff, 1974
from the series Hockey Shots
Cibachrome print
Collection of the Art Gallery of Windsor; Purchased with financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts, Acquisitions Assistance program, 1998
1988.008

Cyndra MacDowall

Cyndra MacDowall is a Windsor-based artist whose work concentrates on spatial relationships vis-à-vis gender, memory, and history. In Circles & Stripes, MacDowall translates the physicality of hockey through a sensorial lens. While sitting in the penalty box watching the University of Windsor’s Lancer Women’s Hockey team play, MacDowall recorded the movement, speed and ephemerality of the gendered body on ice. Skating at high speeds across an expansive sheet of ice, the abstract and distorted bodies in the photographs thus offer new perceptions of gender in competitive sports.

This photograph depicts three women hockey players on the ice, two skating away from the camera and one skating toward. The photo captures movement – the whole image is blurred from the speed of the players whose outlines are visible in yellow and black jerseys. The ice, boards, and audience stands are also blurred in streak-like patterns.

Cyndra MacDowall
Crossing the Blueline, from Circles & Stripes, 2019
Edition of 5, plus A/P (Artists Proof) & P/P (Printers Proof)
67.7 x 101.6 cm
Courtesy of the artist

This image is taken from the sidelines of a hockey game and the yellow top of the sideboards are visible. The backs of two women hockey players are visible, one in a black and yellow jersey, and one in a yellow and black jersey. Both players have brown ponytails falling down their backs underneath their black helmets. In from of them, a player in a black jersey holds their stick far out to the right to glide with the puck, while two players in yellow jerseys rush out on the ice to try and reach the puck. The image grows progressively more blurred, capturing the fast and agile movements of the players on the ice in pursuit of the puck.

Cyndra MacDowall
On the Boards 1, from Circles & Stripes, 2019
Edition of 10, plus A/P (Artists Proof) & P/P (Printers Proof)
30.48 x 45.7 cm
Courtesy of the artist

This image captures the backs of two hockey players with yellow jerseys. The first player is centred in the image, the width of their back taking up the middle third of the image, while the second player is barely visible to the left of the main player in the background. This image is especially blurred in all directions, turning both players into gestural figures instead of static or focussed objects.

Cyndra MacDowall
Overlap Backs, from Circles & Stripes, 2019
Edition of 5, plus A/P (Artists Proof) & P/P (Printers Proof)
67.7 x 101.6 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Hazel Meyer

Hazel Meyer is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Container Technologies is the title of a 2000 text by theorist Zoë Sofia that argues for an understanding of the agency and complexity involved in the act of containing, holding, and storing objects as well as meanings. Meyer’s Container Technologies displays the hockey bags used to store the Canadian AIDS Memorial Quilt, a monumental community-made textile project comprised of more than 600, three by six feet panels that originated in 1989. Each quilt section represents a Canadian who has died from AIDS-related illness(es) since the 1980s. Currently stored at the Canadian AIDS Society (CAS) in Ottawa, sections of the quilt are folded and contained in 18 blue goalie bags that Molson Breweries donated to the project in the 1990s. In collaboration with CAS, Meyer is questioning the relevance and social impact of storing histories, lives, and the material culture of AIDS in Canada in goalie bags–bags that are heavy with symbolism, history, and devastation.

Hazel Meyer extends gratitude to Ryan Conrad and Cait McKinney.

description in following image

Hazel Meyer, in collaboration with the Canadian AIDS Society
Container Technologies, 2019 (Installation at Art Gallery of Windsor)
11 of 22 hockey bags each containing sections of Canada’s AIDS quilt
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the Canadian AIDS Society

Both images depict Hazel Meyer’s installation Container Technologies, created in partnership with the Canadian AIDS Society. The installation comprises 22 Molson Canada blue goalie bags (that contain sections of Canada’s AIDS Memorial Quilt) with white straps, each stamped with the phrase 'The Names Project, Canada', and the French translation 'Les projets des NOMS-Canada.' The bags are stacked on top of each other forming two rows and are displayed on a white rectangular platform. The top image offers an installation view of the work in full while the bottom image provides a close-up and detailed view of the installation

Laura Millard

Laura Millard’s human-scaled fabric lightbox reveals the traces left behind by hockey skates on a frozen lake. According to the artist, “a frozen, snow-free lake provides a vast surface on which to skate. It can also be considered a large surface on which to draw”. In the role of choreographer, Millard instructed a skater’s movement, speed, and form on ice resulting in a collaborative drawing. Similar to the ways in which a pencil leaves traces on paper, the blades of hockey skates etch lines into the surface echoing the swirling and swerving motions of the body on ice. From these indexical traces, Millard fuses gesture, drawing, and photography to blur the lines between representing landscape and experiencing place. The overall performative drawing is transferred on fabric and stretched across a lightbox. Using a water-based printing process, recycled fabric, and LED's to back-light the image, the artist recalls the experience of skating on a frozen pond.

This image is an installation view of Laura Millard’s lightbox entitled Lac des Arcs. The image on the lightbox is that of a frozen pond on which bodies have skated. White blade markings depict circular and curved lines suggesting the aftermath of a hockey game or figure skating event. The top colours in the image are darker while the bottom comprises varying shades of light blues. Displayed in an unlit space, the lightbox casts a glow and mirrored reflection of the piece on the floor

Laura Millard (Toronto, Ontario)
Lac des Arcs, 2018
water-based inks on recyclable polymer fabric and
aluminum frame, 121.92 x 182.88 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

Kent Monkman

Kent Monkman is a Canadian artist of Cree ancestry who is well known for his provocative reinterpretations of romantic North American landscapes. Themes of colonization, sexuality, loss, and resilience – the complexities of historic and contemporary Indigenous experience - are explored in a variety of mediums, including painting, film/video, performance, and installation. His glamorous gender fluid alter-ego named Miss Chief Eagle Testickle appears in much of his work as a time travelling, shape shifting and supernatural being, who reverses the colonial gaze, upending received notions of history and Indigenous people.

Gold-leafed and ornate birch French doors open to reveal a decolonized nativity scene. Surrounding a baby laying on a Hudson Bay Company’s stripped blanket are two men resembling the artist: wearing a blue hooded sweater, the man on the left is kneeling in prayer while the man on the right stands upright in a Chicago Blackhawks hockey jersey. Surrounding objects include a bottle of Coca Cola, bottles of water, non-perishable food items, such as Carnation Evaporated Milk, Campbell’s tomato soup, and Spam, a red gasoline can, and what appears to be a beaver pelt. Behind the nativity scene is a painted landscape in which a child is being taken away to residential school. Atop the archway are the words 'Amor Vincit Omnia' – meaning love conquers all.

This is an image of the wooden church-like panel with the French doors closed. The front of the panel shows the meeting of the two doors with carvings resembling stained glass. Through these carved windows, the scene of the men and trees is faintly visible.

Kent Monkman (Toronto, Ontario)
Love Conquers All, 2017
gold leaf on birch and archival giclée, face mounted to acrylic, 3/3
Collection Trépanier Baer Gallery

This embroidered patch resembles the Chicago Blackhawk’s logo which depicts the side profile of an Indigenous Chief. To resemble the artist’s alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Monkman has embroidered overtop the face blue eyeshadow, red lipstick, and a red hoop earring. This patch is number 69 in an edition of 150.

Kent Monkman
Team Miss Chief Patch, 2016
Edition 69 of 150

Collection of Cyndra MacDowall

François Morelli

Rules and regulations are meant to establish level playing fields. In the game of hockey, infractions result in temporary banishment. When sentenced to the penalty box, also known as the “sin bin,” players become subject to public shaming and measured isolation from the game. In these moments, hockey players are reminded to play nice, be on their best behavior, exemplify sportsmanship, and control their temper. Although, according to Montreal-based artist François Morelli, the rules and regulations of hockey’s punitive system also serve an opposite function. Instead, he understands the penalty box as a space that encourages and glorifies violence on the ice. With what the artist names a “slap on the wrist side show,” sports entertainment has started to capitalize on defaming, destroying, and humiliating adversaries in the game of hockey.

In response to the new culture of “taking a knee” in professional sports versus the omission of knees in Mauvaise conduite–two of a hockey player’s most valuable assets on the ice&ndashMorelli’sinstallation reconsiders the body’s vulnerability in a game dominated by speed, strength, and strategy. Laced overtop tinkered metal forms that appear to have been cut off at the knees, the artist’s skates are precariously positioned to lean and pathetically pivot in a manner that recalls one of the main skills needed in hockey–to skate in circles.

Sculptural installation comprising two parts. On the left side of the image is a large antique wooden expandable accordion circle baby gate. Inside the gate is a single men’s ice skate positioned on the side. Attached to the skate is a metal leg-like armature that grows out at the knee to form a large circular spider web-like grid. To the right of the accordion gated skate is a second men’s ice skate attached to a similar leg armature and web-like form leaning to the side

François Morelli (Montreal, Quebec)
Mauvaise conduit (details), 2007-2017
Courtesy of the Artist

Close-up image of one of the men’s ice skates with the armature and web-like grid leaning on its side

Close-up image (from a different angle) of one of the men’s ice skates with the armature and web-like grid leaning on its side

Close-up image of the men’s ice skate positioned leaning inside the wooden accordion baby gate – and becomes a symbol for the penalty box in hockey

Didier Morelli

On November 11, 2011, as a preamble to a presentation on the African American artist William Pope.L for a seminar at the Center for Theatre, Drama & Performance Studies, Didier Morelli crawled two kilometers from his apartment to a classroom at the University of Toronto. Reciting an excerpt from the Le chandail de hockey (1979), a short story written by Roch Carrier excerpted on the five-dollar bill, he generated a kinesthetic urban experience to introduce Pope.L to his peers. In addition to wearing a Quebec Nordiques jersey, he carried a photocopied image of the artist bandaged around his head, an image he ate midway through the performance as a form of sustenance. In the context of this performance, Carrier’s story becomes an allegory for the historical tensions between English and French Canada. By embodying the vulnerability of Pope.L’s crawls, Morelli was able to reposition his identity as a bilingual artist within complex debates about national identity and citizenship in Canadian performance art.

Didier Morelli (Montreal, QC)
Five Dollar Crawl After William Pope.L, 2011
performance and installation
Courtesy of the Artist

Liz Pead

Liz Pead is a hockey player and artist currently living and working in Toronto. On the ice, Pead is a goaltender, and in the studio, she is a textile artist who blurs the lines between painting and installation. For years, she has been recycling her own used hockey equipment, materials she uses to construct colorfully assembled landscapes that look quintessentially Canadian, but yet impossible to locate on a map. Instead, her landscapes are non-places that hint at the invisibility and erasure of human life. Undeniable in their references to the landscape paintings produced by Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven at the turn of the twentieth century, Pead’s works are more than aesthetic scenes. By challenging the aesthetics of nationalism and performing hyper-feminist complications of the “artist as genius” myth, her works challenge the narratives of omission within Canadian art history.

Close-up image of the canoe made of white goalie pads and recycled hockey equipment. Black leather laces drape over the sides of the canoe, and a goalie stick that is taped with black tape is the paddle. There is another stick laying down inside the canoe as an unused paddle

Liz Pead (Toronto, Ontario)
Saving Tom Thomson and Shut Out Canoe, 2012
recycled hockey equipment, ink, and acrylic with staples on board, goalie pads, industrial felt, hockey pucks on wood boat armature with goalie sticks
Courtesy of the Artist

A multi-media display is captured in exhibition. In the foreground, a canoe rests on the floor, made of goalie pads, hockey pucks, and a goalie stick resting across as a paddle. In the background on the wall is a highly-textured landscape image made of recycled hockey equipment. The scene depicts a Canadian landscape with water, a small island with trees, forested land on the horizon, and a wide blue sky with puffy white clouds. Some of the trees are made of hockey sticks. The water is given texture through the inclusion of dark blue hockey gloves and helmets. The clouds are various shades of white because they are made of plastic hockey masks

Liz Pead (Toronto, Ontario)
DETAIL: Saving Tom Thomson and Shut Out Canoe (detail), 2012
recycled hockey equipment, ink, and acrylic with staples on board, goalie pads, industrial felt, hockey pucks on wood boat armature with goalie sticks
Courtesy of the Artist

Using recycled hockey equipment, such as shoulder pads, knee pads, jerseys, and hockey sticks, the artist created a large textural collage depicting a spring landscape. There is a blue sky with various layers of dark and light blues, white clouds, a border of forest green trees in the distance as well as trees positioned throughout the landscape, fields of greens, yellows, and blues, and a surrounding fence made of broken hockey sticks.

Liz Pead (Toronto, Ontario)
Nellie McClung: Sowing the Seeds in Chatsworth, Ontario, 1873, 2019
Recycled hockey equipment, knitting, ink, and Acrylic paint on board
203.2 x 508 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

Using recycled hockey equipment, such as shoulder pads, knee pads, jerseys, and hockey sticks, the artist created a large textural collage depicting a spring landscape. There is a blue sky with various layers of dark and light blues, white clouds, a border of forest green trees in the distance as well as trees positioned throughout the landscape, fields of greens, yellows, and blues, and a surrounding fence made of broken hockey sticks.

Liz Pead (Toronto, Ontario)
Quarry Fields at Chatsworth, 2019
Recycled hockey equipment, knitting, ink, and Acrylic paint on board
45.7 x 60.9 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

This is a collaged landscape made up of recycled hockey equipment depicting a blue sky with white clouds, trees in full bloom, and red farm sitting on a field of orange, red, and blue hockey jersey fabric. All fabric is stapled to the surface

Liz Pead (Toronto, Ontario)
Homestead
Recycled hockey equipment, knitting, ink, and Acrylic paint on board

45.7 x 60.9 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

This is a collaged winter landscape made up of recycled hockey equipment depicting a blue sky and a snow-covered field created from recycled hockey equipment, in particular jersey material and pad foam

Liz Pead
Port Hope, 2012
Recycled hockey equipment on board
40.64 x 50.8 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

This is a collaged landscape made up of recycled hockey equipment (such as jersey frabric and pad foam) depicting a blue and grey sky with white covered mountains framing black tree trunks and a field of snow with reflections of golden sun rays.

Liz Pead (Toronto, Ontario)
The Gathering, I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
Recycled hockey equipment, knitting, ink, and Acrylic paint on board
45.7 x 60.9 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

This recycled hockey equipment collage depicts a grey and blue textured sky (made from shoulder pads and jersey fabric) and a red barn in a field lightly covered in snow. The ground is created from the foam found inside hockey pads. Positioned on the field of a red barn with a grey roof and green trees on the far right of the piece.

Liz Pead
The Red Barn, 2014
Recycled hockey equipment on plywood
40.64 x 50.8 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

Liss Platt

Liss Platt’s ongoing series of paintings, digital prints, and videos entitled Puck Painting are rooted in the traditions of process art and gestural abstraction. Platt is a long-time hockey player and artist who combines the speed, power, and gendered histories of hockey in her painting and performance art practices. For many years, she has remained dedicated to borrowing, referencing and re-working the traditions of 1940s and 1950s abstract expressionism, an American movement in which artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning emphasized gestural, spontaneous, and intuitive forms of mark making in their interpretations of modern painting. Created by shooting painted hockey pucks directly towards a white, goal-size (4’ x 6’) surface, the composition and patterning of each work is based on the speed, density, and angle of each slap shot. In Power Play, Platt’s puck paintings comment directly on the patterns and trends inherent within abstract expressionism. In relation to the sport, they document the ways in which a body playing defence in hockey must remain in constant motion on the ice. From a political perspective, they are also feminist statements that comment on the gendered histories of modern abstraction, a movement in which women artists were often overlooked.

On a rectangular white panel are yellow and green marks resembling feathers floating in the air. The marks, however, are evidence of the artist performing slapshots. With painted covered hockey pucks, the artist (who is also a hockey player) repeatedly performed their slapshot on a white painted panel creating a commentary on abstract expressionism. From a distance, the marks resemble a murmuration of birds flying in the sky

 

Liss Platt (Hamilton, Ontario)
Puck Painting 68 (Homage to Jagr), 2000
puck rubber and paint on wood
Courtesy of the Artist

On a rectangular white panel are yellow and green marks resembling feathers floating in the air. The marks, however, are evidence of the artist performing slapshots. With painted covered hockey pucks, the artist (who is also a hockey player) repeatedly performed their slapshot on a white painted panel creating a commentary on abstract expressionism

Liss Platt (Hamilton, Ontario)
DETAIL: Puck Painting 68 (Homage to Jagr), 2000
puck rubber and paint on wood
Courtesy of the Artist

On a rectangular white panel are purple marks resembling feathers floating in the air. The marks, however, are evidence of the artist performing slapshots. With painted covered hockey pucks, the artist (who is also a hockey player) repeatedly performed their slapshot on a white painted panel creating a commentary on abstract expressionism. From a distance, the marks resemble a murmuration of birds flying in the sky

This is a photograph that serves as documentation of the artist’s slapshot performance. Wearing their ice skates, black shorts, and a red jersey, Platt is in the act of shooting pucks against a white painted surface.

Victor RomĂŁo

Victor RomĂŁo is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Windsor, Ontario. His time spent living in rural Southwestern Ontario have inspired him to question Otherness and masculinity in rural sports culture. In Power Play: Hockey in Contemporary Art, RomĂŁo showcases the anti-heroes of hockey card culture. Unlike the remarkable athletes typically portrayed and celebrated on hockey cards, the men in these twelve paintings signal the everyman in the sport as well as in sports capitalism.

Twelve panels are pictured in exhibition on a light blue wall. Each panel is a portrait painting of a hockey player with an initial on their jersey. The background of each portrait is a shade of olive green or yellow, and the colours of each portrait are both rich and faded, giving a uniform but antique look to each panel.e

Victor RomĂŁo (Windsor, Ontario)
From left to Right: JJ, Art, Jeff, Josh, John, Eric, Scott, Kyle, TJ, Trevor, Marc, Jeff, < 2014
oil on wood panel
Courtesy of the Artist

A man is painted in portrait in a jersey with red, blue, and white stripes and the letter O on the front. He has short strawberry blond hair, wrinkles in his forehead from slightly-raised eyebrows, and his mouth hangs open in a relaxed manner. He is slouching forward in his seat, elbows resting on his legs. His hands are in red hockey gloves. The background is a solid grey-green tint

JJ, 2014
Oil on Wood
17.78 x 12.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

A man is painted in portrait in a jersey with yellow, red, and white stripes and a bright red letter Y on the front. His head is shaved and he has a grey beard and mustache. His mouth is open in a casual smile, and he has wrinkles on his forehead and around his eyes. There is a smoking pipe held in his right hand, resembling an extinguished Olympic torch, and both hands are in brown hockey gloves which are barely visible at the bottom of the portrait. The background is a solid yellow-green tint.

Art, 2014
Oil on Wood
17.78 x 12.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

A man is painted in portrait in a jersey with yellow, red, and green stripes and a yellow letter F on the front. He has light brown bangs swooped across his forehead, and the faint shadow of stubble on his face. He is leaning forward to rest his forearms on his thighs, and his head is tilted up and back to gaze straight ahead with a neutral expression. His hands are in red hockey gloves that are barely visible at the bottom of the portrait. The background is a solid grey tint

Jeff, 2014
Oil on Wood
17.78 x 12.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

A man is painted in portrait in a jersey with blue, red, and yellow stripes and a white letter N on the front. He has short blond hair and a mole on his left cheek. His eyebrows are slightly raised, adding wrinkles to his forehead in an expression of slight interest. The collar of a dark grey undershirt is visible at the neck of the jersey. His hands are in brown hockey gloves and resting on his legs which are barely visible at the bottom of the portrait. The background is a solid olive green tint.

Josh, 2014
Oil on Wood
17.78 x 12.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

A man is painted in portrait in a jersey with red, yellow, and white stripes and a bright red letter A on the front. He has short white hair and bushy white eyebrows. His mouth is open in a smile, as though he was chuckling, and there are wrinkles around his eyes. He is leaning back casually in his seat. His hands are in red hockey gloves which are folded in his lap. The background is a solid bright yellow-green tint

John, 2014
Oil on Wood
17.78 x 12.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

A man is painted in portrait in a jersey with white and green stripes and a yellow letter U on the front. His round head is shaved, and he has a thin beard and mustache. His hands are in brown hockey gloves which rest in his lap, barely visible at the bottom of the portrait. The background is a solid yellow tint.

Eric, 2014
Oil on Wood
17.78 x 12.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

A man is painted in portrait in a jersey with yellow, green, and white stripes and a green letter N on the front. He has short blond hair and the faint outline of a mustache above his upper lip. The collar of a white undershirt is visible at the neck of his jersey. He is staring calmly straight ahead. His hands are in black hockey gloves which are placed in his lap and barely visible at the bottom of the portrait. The background is a solid orange tint

Scott, 2014
Oil on Wood
17.78 x 12.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

A man is painted in portrait in a jersey with yellow, red, and white stripes and a bright red letter A on the front. His hair is brown and combed over to the left on top of his head. He is wearing black rectangular glasses and his face is rounded and shows signs of stubble. He is staring straight ahead with a serious, if not bored, expression. His hands are in brown hockey gloves which are placed in his lap and barely visible at the bottom of the portrait. The background is a solid olive green tint with shadows of the man over his right shoulder.

Kyle, 2014
Oil on Wood
17.78 x 12.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

A man is painted in portrait in a jersey with navy blue, red, and yellow stripes and a white letter O on the front. His hair is blond with short bangs, he is clean shaved, and his mouth is closed. His gaze is straight ahead. His hands are in brown hockey gloves which are folded in his lap and barely visible at the bottom of the portrait. The background is a solid grey-brown tint with shadows around the man’s shoulders.

TJ, 2014
Oil on Wood
17.78 x 12.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

A man is painted in portrait in a jersey with mustard yellow, brown, and cream stripes and the letter T on the front. His hair is short, he has light facial hair, and his mouth is open in a crooked smile. His hands are in brown hockey gloves which are barely visible at the bottom of the portrait. The background is a solid olive green tint

Trevor, 2014
Oil on Wood
17.78 x 12.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

A man is painted in portrait in a jersey with red and white stripes and a white letter G on the front. His hair is long and brown, he has a mustache and goatee, and his gaze is stern and focussed. There is a smoking pipe held in his right hand, resembling an extinguished Olympic torch, and both hands are in brown hockey gloves which are barely visible at the bottom of the portrait. The background is a solid yellow-green tint.

Marc, 2014
Oil on Wood
17.78 x 12.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

A man is painted in portrait in a jersey with blue, bronze, and mustard yellow stripes with a white letter F on the front. His hair is short, he has a small smile, and his forehead has wrinkles of concern. His hands are in brown hockey gloves and resting on his knees. The background is a solid yellow-green tint.

Jeff, 2014
Oil on Wood
17.78 x 12.7 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

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