BARCODE
by JAMES FOWLER
April 1-25, 2026
Opening reception, Thursday, April 2, 6 - 9 pm
B A R C O D E is a collection of seventy coloured bandanas hand embroidered with corporate marketing slogans and taglines. Drawing on the historical “Hanky Code,” a colour-based system of erotic signaling used by gay men since the 1970s, Fowler reactivates this subcultural language to examine the corporatization of Pride and the gradual sanitization of sex-positive queer culture.
For decades, coloured handkerchiefs worn in the back pocket allowed gay men to communicate specific desires through a nuanced system of coded colours. As Pride events increasingly attract corporate sponsorship, however, more explicit aspects of queer culture are often softened or excluded in favour of family-friendly branding.
By pairing Hanky Code colours with corporate slogans whose language of appetite, pleasure, endurance, and service echoes their coded meanings, Fowler exposes the uneasy overlap between consumer marketing and queer desire.
Free beginner hand embroidery workshops will be held Saturday April 18 and Saturday April 25, 2–5 PM.
James Fowler is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist working across painting, textiles, and sculpture. He is a member of Red Head Gallery and a founding member of the Throbbing Rose Collective, producers of Nuit Rose.
Grant Heaps is a Canadian born textile artist. Fascinated with fabric since childhood he has dedicated his life to its worship. He has spent his working life backstage in theatre wardrobe departments. He has been part of The National Ballet of Canada’s touring wardrobe department for 30 years. His obsessions are fabric, the discarded, decay, the end of the world, personal adornment, and home. Grant’s navigation through this difficult world is his drive to make art. His work is a process, slowly doing what is needed to actualize what he sees with his imagination. Pieces tend to be large and complicated with a nod to outsiders. Grant’s work has been shown at The Textile Museum of Canada, The Museum of Art and Design, NYC and most recently in NODE, a Red Head Gallery Exhibition.
