Fall 2026 Exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Guelph

Join us Thursday, September 17 at 6:30pm for the public launch of AGG’s Fall 2026 season, featuring four new exhibitions that explore relationships to the land, the body, and the self.

Artists and curators will be in attendance. All are welcome. Refreshments will be served, and a cash bar will be available.

Earth Bodies

September 17, 2026 – January 3, 2027
Curated by Erin Szikora

KC Adams, Carl Beam, Elizabeth Doxtater, Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, Suzanne Morrissette, Nadia Myre, Kahionwinehshon Phillips, and Santee Smith

Earth Bodies considers how clay carries histories, memories, and cultural traditions across generations, bringing together eight contemporary Indigenous artists and relational makers whose works explore clay as a material, a relative, and a site of knowledge. Traditional vessels and experimental forms draw ancestral technologies into dialogue with contemporary ideas and aesthetics, exploring themes of belonging, loss, and nourishment. Resisting distinctions between art and craft, function and decoration, this exhibition celebrates clay as a living collaborator that both shapes and is shaped by its maker. read more >

Organized and presented by the Art Gallery of Guelph with support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Government of Ontario through the Regional Tourism Organization 4 Inc. and the Ontario Arts Council.

Image: Kahionwinehshon Phillips, Tota’s Fine China (detail), 2026, earthenware clay and Haudenosaunee raised beadwork. Courtesy of the artist.

looking in/looking through

September 17, 2026 – January 3, 2027
Curated by Casper Sutton-Fosman, recipient of the 2026 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators

Hannah Bullock, Charline Dally, Breanne Jeethan, and Miles Rufelds

looking in/looking through explores the intertwined histories of photography and medical imaging, considering how both have sought to reveal what cannot readily be seen. Borrowing the visual languages of diagnostic technologies, the artists turn forms of clinical observation toward questions of identity, embodiment, and selfhood. Fragmented, abstracted, and made unfamiliar, the body becomes a site where art and medicine converge. Through these works, the exhibition examines how technologies of vision shape what we see, what remains hidden, and how we understand ourselves. read more >

Organized and presented by the Art Gallery of Guelph with support from the Centre Wellington Community Foundation’s Middlebrook Social Innovation Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council.

Image: Breanne Jeethan, Unviable (detail), 2024, MDF, LED lights, and film print. Courtesy of the artist.

records and manifestations

September 17, 2026 – January 3, 2027
Curated by Casper Sutton-Fosman, recipient of the 2026 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators

Evergon, Janieta Eyre, April Hickox, Suzy Lake, Shelley Niro, and Diana Thorneycroft

Photography has long held a reputation as a documentary method, yet early photography was, by necessity, often staged. The first photographic processes required long exposure times, ranging from a few seconds to a few hours. This was a particular consideration for portraiture as even the slightest movement could blur the body, transforming an apparent representation of reality into an abstract apparition. Drawing from AGG’s permanent collection, this exhibition traces echoes of early photographic practices and aesthetics in contemporary photography, featuring images that use staging, movement, and abstraction to question representation and photographic truth. read more >

Organized and presented by the Art Gallery of Guelph with support from the Centre Wellington Community Foundation’s Middlebrook Social Innovation Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council.

Image: Diana Thorneycroft, Untitled (& if she wakes) (detail), 1994, gelatin silver print. Gift of Robert Enright, 2007. Art Gallery of Guelph Collection.

Curating in Progress

This fall, AGG will host a working curatorial laboratory for students in Exhibitions: Design, Theory, Practice, a course in the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph. Throughout the semester, students will explore how exhibitions are conceived, researched, organized, interpreted, and experienced. Rather than presenting a finished exhibition, Curating in Progress makes the process of exhibition-making visible. Supporting the research and development of an upcoming exhibition marking Guelph’s bicentennial, students will explore relationships among memory, images, and urban space. As ideas are proposed, tested, questioned, refined, and reimagined, works, texts, and arrangements will shift and reconfigure. read more >

Image: Evan Macdonald, Dam, Water Street (detail), undated, watercolour and ink on paper, 8.9 x 11.4 cm. Gift of the Family of Evan Macdonald, 2009. Macdonald Stewart Art Centre Collection at the Art Gallery of Guelph.

Visit the Art Gallery of Guelph

The Art Gallery of Guelph is open from 12 to 5pm, Tuesday through Sunday. All are welcome, and admission is free. Located at the edge of the University of Guelph campus, the gallery offers a dynamic space for visitors to engage with contemporary and historical artistic practices and research, explore diverse perspectives, and experience thought-provoking exhibitions. Through its commitment to fostering creative dialogue, AGG provides an accessible and inclusive environment where art connects communities and inspires new ways of seeing.

Art Gallery of Guelph
358 Gordon Street, Guelph, ON N1G 1Y1
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 12 – 5pm | Accessible
519-837-0010
artgalleryofguelph.ca
info@artgalleryofguelph.ca
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