Display of Affection No.2

Artist and Photographer: Luke George

Plant (Ficus Elastica - Ruby), mariners rope, steel rings, grow light, humidifier.

Installation for: Company of Men Exhibition at Club80, Collingwood, Midsumma Festival 2020

Obsessed with rope as a medium, Luke entangles craft with kink to playfully unpick social tensions and connectivity. A kind of hard-soft. Through the DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION series, Luke explores queer social choreographies and the queering of public and private spaces. The installations and interventions consider the fragility and temporality of queer intimacies, glimpsing traces of bodies lingering and loitering in space and time; non-verbal dances of anticipation, tensions and subtle signals; weaving desire-lines through unsuspecting spaces.

For this series, Luke considers the potential for different types of masculinities through the qualities of beauty, intimacy, connection and care. The attention is on the perspective of the sub/ject (‘bottom’) and their gaze back at the viewer. Luke’s role and responsibility as artist (‘Rigger’), is to collaborate with his sub/ject, supporting and sustaining them, seeing to their needs and desires, as well as his own.

For Display of Affection 2, the sub/ject is Ficus Elastica - Ruby
Ruby is into rubber and likes to be trained
They respond to a gentle yet firm bind
An exhibitionist, Ruby likes to be shown-off as an object of desire

In January 2020, Luke tied Ruby in rope bondage and suspended them in the dark sex dungeon of infamous Collingwood gay cruising venue Club80. Throughout the 2 weeks of exhibition, Luke attended on Ruby daily, misting and watering, polishing leaves, refilling the humidifier, turning on the grow light. Shortly after the exhibition concluded, Melbourne and the rest of the world went into pandemic lockdowns and Club80 was sold to a property developer and now sits empty. Subsequently during Melbourne’s long lockdowns of 2020-21, outdoor cruising activity escalated.