The Hockey Museum (THM) has acquired four framed pieces of artificial Poligras turf from hockey pitch manufacturers Polytan. Each originates from a different Olympic Games:

• Sydney 2000
• Beijing 2008
• London 2012
• Rio 2016

Can you work out which is which? Answers are at the bottom of this article.

They look like a series of modern artworks, ready to take their place on the walls of an art gallery. Is it too much to suggest that there is something of the great American Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko about them?

Rothko’s art is known as colour field painting. His works are an exploration of the emotive power of colour. Sometimes touching, occasionally disturbing, his large-scale canvases can range from ecstasy to anger, joy to despair.

These Poligras pieces recall Rothko’s vast fields of colour and evoke memories of much larger surfaces – the resplendent coloured fields of play upon which Olympic hockey teams pit themselves against each other. Rothko’s art is renowned for stimulating emotional highs and lows – emotions familiar to elite athletes. At the Olympic Games, on these very pitches, they test themselves at the highest level; four years of dedication and sacrifice played out on a canvas for the ages.

Discover more about Mark Rothko’s life and work by clicking here.

ANSWERS

Top left:  Poligras pitch from the London 2012 Olympic Games
Top right:  Poligras pitch from the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games
Bottom left:  Poligras pitch from the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games
Bottom right:  Poligras pitch from the Rio 2016 Olympic Games