Upcoming Exhibitions

Game/Culture

May 27 – September 3, 2022

Mallory Tolcher, Lucas Morneau, Craig Willms, Nathalie Quagliotto

As the old cliché goes, artists become interested in art because they can’t play sports. This only shows how so much of our social conditioning – including our formative years in school – encourages the idea that sports and art are somehow worlds apart. Yet both pursuits require rigorous practice, hard work, and drive. The movement and rhythm of an artist’s body is an integral to a finished painting, drawing, or sculpture as that of an athlete striving for their best. And perhaps most critically, the worlds of art and sport are both known to privilege and reward only certain kinds of bodies, at the exclusion of others.

All four artists in this exhibition explore some of the connections and contradictions between contemporary art and sports, often through shared strategies such as humour and audience participation. The works in this exhibition by Mallory Tolcher, Lucas Morneau, Craig Willms, and Nathalie Quagliotto each question our society’s common assumptions about which bodies are welcomed or excluded in the sporting world, while also examining the ways our collective and individual identities are shaped by our experiences, both positive and negative, with athletic activities.

Image Credit: Mallory Tolcher, Lace Net (detail), from the series Nothing But Net, 2020, lace and basketball hoop, 108 x 18 inches.