Darklings
Eloise Kirk
Black Smoker
Alchemy was never going to work, but without it the scientific method itself would never have emerged and crystallised into a useful approach for understanding the complexities of existence. Alchemy was caught up in symbols and magic, but it also marked a shift out of an era dominated by fear and superstition into the world we live in now. It is easy, even tempting, to belittle and scoff, but that removes everything that alchemy may still reveal about the progress of knowledge: a reliance on odd magic symbols, and concerns with the elements, was a complex human navigation that did not end up at the destination the people investigating them set out for—lead was not turned into gold. Almost by accident, however, humanity was taken somewhere important. Alchemy may not have worked, but it did succeed.
Analogous with alchemy, Eloise Kirk’s amorphous practice is a complex vernacular of form and material. This work can be read as a kind of navigation, with her deceptively simple, clean and precise work having something in common with esoteric sigils, magical formula and maps of the heavens. Kirk utilises a palette of materials that have the weighty implication of the concept of the four elements, precisely chosen and shaped into collage; a dark, shiny resin that seems like some form of primordial ooze; rough, sack-like material, paint and most recently, metal. Kirk forms these elemental materials, using the technique of assemblage, into a sequence of symbolic forms that have an occult resonance: stylised clouds, pyramid-like triangles, rugged crystal shapes and geometric echoes. Kirk’s art draws on a complex personal codex of symbolic form, techniques and materials; she returns to certain shapes as if they