Scott Elk
Desire Lines - Alice Springs; Wheel Thrown Coffee Cup, 2022.
Stoneware ceramic
12cm x 16cm x 8cm
Edition of 7

Featuring the distinctive Desire Lines raw clay marbled handle from my main ceramics practise, with a variety of red centre orange and complimentary neutral glaze tones. The edition of 7 means the same glaze combination is applied consistently across the cups, but each cup is unique as a result of the individual wheel thrown process, and the way glazes interact with each other, melting, dripping and spreading.

It’s so stupid, but a good
cup makes me so happy.

As a contemporary artist, there is still a certain charm that draws me to the tradition of making functional ceramics. Aside from the obvious benefits of building up technique, it’s hard to describe the joy I get from actually using the things I make, and that initial excitement of rushing a cup back home to test; it might be the feeling of holding the cup, the way the handle hugs your hand, the feeling of the raw clay rim on your lips as you drink from it, and the aesthetic aspect which makes you want to keep looking, and touching, and imagining the moment of flux in the kiln when the silica, and ground down metal colourants started to melt and move. It’s this intense sensorial experience that is unique to ceramics, and one I just keep chasing, always searching for that perfect cup.

DETAIL:

Desire Lines

The majority of work produced in 2022 falls into my Desire Lines series of paintings, drawings, screenprints, and ceramics. The series is about relationship to place, connection to people, and the sometimes intoxicating, head-fucking connection of physical interaction.

A desire line, is a term often referred to in urban or transportation planning, as a path created as a consequence of human traffic. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. It is the way taken by choice, by desire, and by necessity when following the heart. It is movement with intention.

In a real world practical application, the desire lines have the possibility to connect people resulting in events along a time line. I see people as these spinning vortexes of energy, in a positive sense like galaxies spinning and reaching out, and in contrast, negatively sucking everything towards themselves like black holes spinning. When two of these things collide, wondrous and unexpected things can happen; colours swirl, planets could be flung out of orbit, or set in a new orbit, momentarily or until the end of time. My interpretation of these desire lines is constantly searching to insert the human element of connection into fragmented, and abstracted forms.