Display of Affection No.1
Artist: Luke George
Macramé, mariners rope, steel rings, steel frame.
Company of Men Exhibition at Tacit Galleries, Collingwood - Midsumma Festival 2018
Recognition: Winner of the Project Claude Art Award
Photography: Liam Wright
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.
Display of Affection #1 is a macramé sex-sling in which the spectator can climb in, relax and spend some time.
