Thursday, January 19
6:00 to 8:00 pm
Ages 7+, FREE
Kits available for purchase, $25
Join artist Lucas Morneau in our studios for an introduction to rug hooking—a fun, versatile, and relaxing medium that is great for beginners to fibre art. Hook with strips of fabric, yarn, or even an old pair of pantyhose. Participants will be taught to hook loops into burlap to create brightly-coloured rugs perfect for either a floor or a wall. Whether you hook a landscape, a portrait, a political statement, or an abstract design, what you make is up to you!
Bring your own materials or purchase a kit at a special workshop rate of $25 (regularly $38). Kit includes a 2.5 mm steel rug hook, a 10” hoop, 12” square of burlap, and two skeins of Briggs & Little wool.
Photo by Annie France Noël
The Artist
Lucas Morneau (he/they) is a queer interdisciplinary artist and curator of English-Newfoundlander and French-Québeçois European settler descent from Ktaqamkuk (Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada). They received their Bachelor of Fine Arts at Memorial University, Grenfell Campus, Corner Brook, Newfoundland, in 2016, and their Master of Fine Arts at University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in 2018. They have received multiple awards, including the 2016 BMO First Art Award for Newfoundland and Labrador and the 2018 Cox & Palmer Pivotal Point Grant. Their work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, ArtsNL, and ArtsNB.
Through drag and masquerade, Morneau has created an alter-ego, The Queer Mummer, to explore gender performativity and to address hegemonic masculinity and its effect on gender expression and identity. Their practice employs several mediums, including photography, fibre art, performance, video, installation, printmaking, and sculpture.
The Exhibition
Playfully and provocatively challenging the prevalence of homophobia and hyper-masculinity in the culture of team sports, Lucas Morneau’s Queer Newfoundland Hockey League (QNHL) proposes 14 fictional teams that reclaim, empower, and amplify LGBTQIA2S+ voices. With team names that include the St. John’s Sissies, Bonavista Buggers, and Ferryland Fairies, Morneau subverts pejoratives used against the LGBTQIA2S+ community, paired with places historically associated with senior hockey league teams in Newfoundland and Labrador. Each jersey is hand crocheted and rug-hooked, using craft practices often delegated as “women’s work.”
Lucas Morneau’s Queer Newfoundland Hockey League (QNHL) is on view in The Cube from January 14 to April 1, 2023.