LUCAS MORNEAU – June, 2020

2020/2021 Artist-in-Residence Program: Environment

Critical Mass chose Environment for its 2020 programming theme.

Artists are invited to explore this theme in terms of the natural and/or cultural environment as widely or as narrowly as their practice and interests dictate.

Lucas Morneau will explore the cultural environment in sports during his residency.

Residency 2021:
4 weeks
(May/June, 2021)

2020 ‘Virtual’ Engagements:
June 9 – Takeover Tuesday & Cook Along
June 11- Makers Night & Artist Talk
June 18 – Crocheted Beer Cozies workshop

Location:
Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador
Port Hope, Ontario

Connect with Lucas Morneau:
Instagram: @thequeermummer
Website: lucasmorneau.com

ARTIST BIO

Lucas Morneau is an interdisciplinary artist from Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Morneau received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Arts at Memorial University – Grenfell Campus in 2016, where he spent a semester abroad in Old Harlow, England, and his Master of Fine Arts (Studio Art) at University of Saskatchewan in 2018.

Morneau has exhibited artwork across Canada and the United Kingdom, including solo exhibitions in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. In 2016, Morneau was the regional winner of the BMO First Art Award for Newfoundland and Labrador. In 2018, Morneau was the recipient of the Cox & Palmer Pivotal Point Grant.

Using photography, video, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and performance, Morneau’s work is autobiographical and based in social activism. Through his alter-ego The Queer Mummer blends the tradition of mummering with the queer artform of drag in order to deconstruct homophobic attitudes still prevalent in Western society.

Mummering is the Christmas tradition of dressing in homemade guises, including crossdressing, and performing for neighbours, whose job is to guess which members from the community are dressed up.

The Queer Mummer demonstrates that mummering is, itself a queer performance practice. Both drag and mummering are tools for multi-vocal expression of identity, and both blur the gender binary, queering public space in one way or another and giving license to possibilities beyond the two-gender system.

RESIDENCY PROJECT

Queer Newfoundland Hockey League, or QNHL for short, is a series of crocheted and rug hooked hockey jerseys and goalie masks for 14 fictious hockey teams that deconstructs toxic masculinity, homophobia, and machoism in sports culture, especially hockey. Inspired by the firing of Don Cherry, a polarizing hockey figure known for using homophobic pejoratives frequently, QNHL’s hockey teams are all named after pejoratives commonly used against queer people, including pejoratives Cherry used on the air. The use of pejoratives and stereotypes used in the series also references the use of racially charged, offensive team names within national sports leagues such as the Edmonton Eskimos. By using language that is normally used to attack one’s “manliness”, QNHL aims to reclaim the pejoratives used when describing players by portraying them as the team names, names reserved for the tough or threatening.

Each team logo is rug hooked and jerseys are crocheted. Each jersey also is paired with a crocheted goalie mask, referencing Jacques Plante’s goalie mask and crocheted doilies, as Plante’s ‘man-hood’ was questioned when he first wore his mask.

Given Port Hope’s strong history with hockey, including having a former NHL player as mayor at one point, Lucas believes the Critical Mass residency is the perfect opportunity to discuss issues with the cultural environment in sports.