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Appetite for Glory, Daniel St-Amant\u2019s contribution to In the Box \u2014 an art show celebrating soccer \u2014 on now at Toronto\u2019s The Local Gallery, doesn’t immediately fit in with the depictions of footballing heroes, sports equipment, and athletes in play that surround it. A Pac-Man style figure eating two circles, rendered in faux-concrete, the piece is a bit of thinker. But St-Amant says that the piece is actually totally on theme, particularly in a World Cup host city.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsing images like Pac-Man for me represents consumption \u2026 eat, eat, eat, consume, consume, consume,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I think FIFA overall is very representative of that. Buy, buy, buy, watch, watch, watch. It’s not a negative comment. It’s just sort of a comment on where we are as a society. And I think Pac-Man, he’s round like a ball. It just kind of hit me. and I was like, \u2018Why not? Let’s give it a shot.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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Appetite for Glory by Daniel St-Amant, part of In the Box at The Local Gallery in Toronto. (Courtesy The Local Gallery)<\/p>\n
Art-about-sports has always been a key part of what The Local Gallery does. When the gallery first opened in Toronto in 2022 one of its early shows was \u201cIn the Paint,\u201d an exhibition that celebrated the game of basketball. Its sister gallery in New York has also hosted several exhibitions celebrating both hoops in general and the Knicks specifically.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we opened, we were just coming out of the pandemic\u2026 and we were seeing online lots of sports [art], because we were watching [NBA] playoffs and we were seeing a crossover with what artists were doing that was just really interesting,\u201d says Local Gallery co-founder Kaitlin Doherty. \u201cSo, we’re one of the first galleries in the world to celebrate it at this scale and the level. And then we just continued to do it because we saw the response to it.”<\/p>\n
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Maradona by Dave Murray, part of In the Box at The Local Gallery in Toronto. (Courtesy The Local Gallery)<\/p>\n
With the World Cup in town, The Local Gallery team decided to investigate the world of sports once again. In the Box includes painting, sculpture, and mixed media pieces. Doherty says soccer, or football, depending on your preference, lends itself well to art because \u201cthe fan culture of football is just so deep, so passionate, and you can kind of see it through all the artists and what perspective they’ve brought in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Illustrator and painter Dave Murray had an up-close and personal experience of the World Cup. He designed Toronto\u2019s official host city poster for the tournament, something he calls \u201ca crazy honour. It still feels quite surreal to have my work chosen \u2026 there’s insane talent in the city.\u201d He also has a piece in In the Box. Maradona is a depiction of Diego Maradona, Argentinian sporting icon of the 1980s, and a deeply divisive and controversial figure off the pitch, done in a style that Murray says \u201ca lot of my inspirations in art: Cubism, Futurism, Deco. I love to kind of inject as much movement into uh, to every piece that I make.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Don’t Look Back by Kyle Adams, part of In the Box at The Local Gallery in Toronto. (Courtesy The Local Gallery)<\/p>\n
He chose Maradona because he\u2019s \u201ca larger than life character and absolute icon of the game\u201d That iconic status, and Maradonna\u2019s iconic look \u201cgives me something very definitive to kind of apply style to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Combining art and sport isn\u2019t new for Murray. As a teenager, he got a scholarship to a private school based on both his artistic prowess and hockey skill where he played goalie \u201cI was always in-between worlds and in-between cultures \u2026 I feel very lucky to have the chance to take these two passions of mine, these two worlds, and help them meet in the middle and create more inclusivity for people who might feel excluded,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That desire, to bridge art and sport, making both feel inclusive, is baked into The Local Gallery\u2019s DNA at this point, according to Doherty, and while they will do exhibits about other things, sport is something they play to keep coming back to. \u201cSport is a part of culture as much as art is,\u201d she says. \u201cSo it\u2019s always really nice to bring those pieces together.\u201d<\/p>\n