COLCHESTER.- This summer, Firstsite exhibits rarely seen works by the artist Duncan Grant (1885-1978) alongside other contemporary artists to explore queer desire in public and online across three generations.

Worlds Through Desire: From Drawing to Cruising to DMs brings together around 35 works by Grant - some that have never been seen before - as well as work by Jean Claracq, Jonathan Lyndon Chase and new work by David Lock, Matthew Ansell, and Gregory Hayman. The show also includes new works by various anonymous artists from East Anglia.

With over 60 works, it features drawings, watercolours, ceramics, paintings, photography, etchings, mixed media, prints and much more.

Presented as a visual poem, the exhibition explores the different ways gay, bi, queer and questioning men, and non-binary people seek mentorship, friendship, love and intimacy, as told through the artwork of three generations of artists and voices, as well as stories of seeking others in public and online in East Anglia.

It demonstrates how art has helped facilitate community and encouraged interaction with its ability to highlight LGBT meeting spaces, from galleries to cruising grounds such as beaches and parks. The exhibition will also look at the recent effect of dating apps, gaming communities and social media and how that has impacted these connections in the 21st century.

From this starting point, the exhibition continues to look at how art, technology, and social networks shape the complex ways gay, bi, queer and questioning men, and non-binary people express masculinity, seek intimacy, share knowledge, and experience risk within shared spaces.

Worlds Through Desire uses a significant number of Grant's works to explore how desire was mediated in the early 20th century, beginning with drawings of his then-partner, David Garnett, who he stayed with at a farm in Suffolk in 1916. The exhibition also features works exploring Grant's fluid relationships and friendships with men he encountered in public cruising grounds, including depictions of bathers, lovers and male nudes.

A modernist painter and designer born in Scotland, Grant pursued a long career that incorporated textile designs, theatre sets, costumes, mural painting and ceramic making. He was central to the Bloomsbury Group’s influence in artistic and influential circles and pursued many same-sex relationships in an unconventional private life.
Recognised as one of the greatest draughtsmen of his generation, Grant would often make private drawings inspired by Roman and Greek art. These featured his partners and friends which would then often be offered to them as gifts. Some of these were explicit and due to the laws of the time also carried a legal penalty if their possession was discovered.

Preparatory studies that have never been exhibited before can now be seen, including those that inspired Grant’s work, which are now part of the Tate collection.

Work by contemporary artists include French painter Jean Claracq's Unknown Man Against a Background of Flames (2021), which combines references to Tudor portrait miniatures with the use of working-class clothing as a form of social and sexual coding, both in physical spaces and on digital platforms. The work also engages with contemporary gay social and dating apps such as Grindr where clothing, appearance and self-presentation play a role in expressing identity and facilitating both intimate and social connections.

The American artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase’s mixed media paintings explore relationships and expressions of bodies in public and private spaces. The large-scale smell good hand shake (2019) is an example of people meeting in ambiguous public places and domestic scenes, with the artist’s trademark mixed-media artworks made from materials such as paint, glitter, and physical clothing.

New work by British artist David Lock includes watercolour studies of men in public spaces, some including cruising locations, alongside online dating-app profiles, from sports people to “gamers”.

And newly-commissioned poems by East Anglian poet James McDermott who reflects on the use of body image and digital self-presentation by athletic and sports LGBT+ men in online dating spaces. This is heard alongside a performative phone reading of the poem ‘Grind’ incorporating online experiences of discrimination and power dynamics seen within Grindr profiles.

The exhibition also includes work by anonymous artists from East Anglia, to explore cruising as more than a sexual practice, revealing its role in building friendships, sharing sexual health knowledge, creating better access for disabled people, and fostering artistic communities.

Through using poetry and phone notes as interpretation the exhibition looks at queer connection, from developing dating apps for seeking other queer people, to encounters through cruising, art-world mentorship and life-drawing groups. This reflects a growing trend of heterosexual and gay men using social media and LGBT dating apps to seek modelling opportunities, seeking validation through having their bodies seen.

Worlds Through Desire: From Drawing to Cruising to DMs promises to be an innovative journey showcasing how art can create and strengthen community. By focusing on a master draughtsmen through the influential figure of Duncan Grant, the exhibition takes visitors on an exploration of how queer art has helped evolve and facilitate desire, and how it has led people to new and connected worlds of companionship.

Sally Shaw MBE, Director of Firstsite, said: “At its heart, Worlds Through Desire: From Drawing to Cruising to DMs is about connection. Bringing together rarely seen works by Duncan Grant alongside contemporary artists and voices from East Anglia, it traces the ways gay, bi, queer and questioning men, and non-binary people have built friendships, relationships and communities across generations. Across the exhibition are deeply human, raw, emotional and intimate stories of men reaching out through art, through encounter, and through today’s online spaces to find each other, form relationships and navigate intimacy.

“A real thread running through the show is the importance of art spaces themselves, and the act of making art, in queer lives. Time and again, artistic communities have created places where people can meet, talk, learn from one another and form lasting bonds. Duncan Grant’s life and work is a striking example of this - showing how making art was also a way of making connection.

“At a moment when questions of identity, belonging and connection feel especially important, the exhibition invites visitors to pause and reflect on what has changed and what has remained constant. It offers a space to think about how art continues to bring people together in unexpected and meaningful ways, and to sit with the emotional realities of gay, bi and queer men navigating friendship, desire and closeness today—stories that are rarely spoken about so openly.”