Join writer, curator and art historian Simon Watney, author of The Art of Duncan Grant (1990), and Firstsite Programme Manager Exhibitions George Morl for an in-conversation event exploring Duncan Grant’s drawings and the friendships that shaped his life and artistic practice.

Drawing on his friendship with Duncan Grant and decades of research, Watney reflects on Grant’s relationships, creative networks from Suffolk to Sussex, and the social worlds in which his work was made.

Throughout his life, Duncan Grant gifted drawings and paintings to friends and partners. Simon Watney has generously lent works to Duncan Grant: Worlds Through Desire – From Drawing to Cruising to DMs, offering a rare opportunity to encounter them together.

Presented alongside Duncan Grant exhibition at Firstsite, this conversation offers new perspectives on how friendship, intimacy and artistic exchange informed Grant’s work, complementing the exhibition’s exploration of LGBTQ+ histories, connection and the changing ways people find one another across generations from cruising to dating apps.

Simon Watney

Simon Watney is a writer, curator and art historian whose work has shaped the study of queer art and culture for more than four decades.

He has written extensively on modern British art, HIV/AIDS, queer history including, The Art of Duncan Grant (1990), Policing Desire: Pornography, AIDS and the Media (1986). He co-founded the political group OutRage! In 1990.

George Morl

George Morl is Programme Manager Exhibitions at Firstsite, and organised Duncan Grant: Worlds Through Desire (2026), Voyager 2000: Worldbeing & Wonder (2025), Leonora Carrington: Avatars & Alliances (2024), and David Lock: In-Between Us (2024).

His work explores how art, technology and contemporary culture shape the ways people form relationships and construct self-images.

About ‘Duncan Grant: Worlds Through Desire – From Drawing to Cruising to DMs’

Bringing together artworks, stories and poetry from three generations of voices, explore how LGBT+ people have sought desire, such as friendship, community, and intimacy, across changing times and technologies.

At the heart of the exhibition are intimate drawings and paintings by artist Duncan Grant, who in 1916 worked on a farm in Suffolk with his then partner, David Garnett, to escape the war.