The curious case of the sleeping lovers

On a pristine white wall in the National Gallery of Australia, funnels of red and black liquid hang like an intravenous drip. Their shadows and tubes lead our eyes to the adjacent wall where energetic sprays of black ink hint at movement. Over five decades, Rebecca Horn’s (1944–2024) oeuvre traverses sculpture, installation, film, photography and performance. Les Amants [The lovers] 1991 was the first of Horn’s kinetic works to have a painting arm, existing between the human and the mechanical as an extension of Horn’s own body. The lovers are painters, performers and partners, unreserved in their desire to ooze, splatter and trickle wherever they are summoned to perform before returning to stillness.

Visitors are drawn towards The lovers, intrigued by their anonymous liquid, funnels and motors. The mechanical arm hovers tantalisingly, just above where the splatters begin and where the ink has raced to the floor. We recognise signs of life in the motor and tubes waiting to surge and begin their inky dance. We expect movement. We look for explanations, labels, times, any hint of when we can share the performance. As time passes, the dormancy of The lovers makes us restless — one moment we are sure the arm will awaken and draw us into the work, then uneasy, afraid to take our eyes away in case we miss the first shiver of movement. However, the work is unmoving: the ink is dry; the floor is pristine.

Although The lovers were made to perform, the sprays and sweeps of their mechanical arm risk invading the works with which they share space, so in this iteration they are at rest. They tire like the arm of an artist, and their ink dries like paint on a palette or a discarded brush. But even stilled, they hint at the movement which created them; in their stasis there is the promise that The lovers will dance again.​​​

This story is part of the 2024 Young Writers Digital Residency.