New Georgian College art exhibition supports queer community

Feb. 4, 2025

A new art exhibition at Georgian College’s Campus Gallery explores looking and desire in queer culture through drawings and analog photography.

The exhibition, Fascinate, showcases the work of Tyler Durbano (he/they), a Barrie-based queer visual artist, former instructor in Georgian’s Design and Visual Arts department, and Artistic Director at the MacLaren Art Centre.

Durbano’s work reveals a queer ethos and intuition embedded in the regular, within and beyond erotic tropes associated with queer art. For example, motifs such as trails, silhouettes and suggestive objects evoke cruising as a practice of reading between signs and traces.

The exhibition explores intuition and reflection and is meant to provoke meaningful conversations, using visual framing as a metaphor for thresholds between self and world, form and feeling, and abstraction and queer experience. It runs Feb. 13 to March 22.

“Durbano’s works on paper contour luscious compositions that open onto inner landscapes. The photographs trace his body’s movement through private and public spaces that map queer histories in the Barrie region,” said Francisco-Fernando Granados, the exhibition’s curator. “The double movement of his multidisciplinary method and its simultaneous showing creates a dialogue between drawing and analog photography that alludes to thresholds of vision and passage.”

The exhibition is in partnership with Georgian’s Museum and Gallery Studies department.

“Tyler Durbano has contributed and championed the arts community in this region and beyond in a variety of meaningful ways,” said Amy Bagshaw, Director, The Campus Gallery at Georgian. “With Fascinate, The Campus Gallery is thrilled to support Tyler as an artist and celebrate his stunning work. Collaborating with Francisco-Fernando to bring focus to the importance of visibility in queer communities makes this exhibition even more profound.”

Exhibition details:

• Runs Feb. 13 to March 22.
• Opening reception: Thursday, Feb. 13, 5 to 7 p.m.
• Artist and curator talk: Thursday, March 6, 10 a.m.
• Campus Gallery hours of operation: Mondays to Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 4 p.m.

The Campus Gallery is located at Georgian’s Barrie Campus, room D140 (D building) in the Helen and Arch Brown Centre for Design and Visual Arts, One Georgian Dr., Barrie, ON.