Scott Elk
Desire Lines - Requiem for the Darlinghurst 9, 2022
Stoneware ceramic, neon
160cm x 60cm x 60cm

During the process of making my 100 handle pot, I inevitably lost handles along the way; some for aesthetic reasons, some I knocked as I walked past, and some on the journey to the kiln room. 

It was not lost on me the place I was making the ceramic work was celebrating a double centenary; 100 years as an art school, and 100 years as a jail. With this in mind, I wanted the artwork to be, not about the pot, but about the ceramic process and the nine handles lost, as a visual metaphor for the lives lost on site in it's 100 years as a jail.

Using the Australian coloquialistic habit of nicknaming criminals, the lost handles have been dubbed the Darlinghurst 9 in reference to the Darlinghurst inmates, and this pot is their requiem. The nine handles are floating above the pot, having turned into light, and are slowly accending into the aether. 

This work has a corresponding soundscape by the same name. 

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.