desireline explores the relationships and tensions between land and human, considering the ways each informs the other. Walking becomes a tool for observation and a means of forming connections between human and nonhuman bodies. A desire line is an unplanned path formed through the repeated movement of humans or animals across land. Once a trace becomes visible, other bodies follow what already exists. Continued use erodes remaining ground cover, compacts the soil and makes the path increasingly difficult to grow over. The more a desire line is used, the more visible it becomes. Without continual use, however, it begins to disappear.

Hill’s video footage adopts a unique perspective, framing the landscape through the movement of her legs as she follows a chosen path. These are paths formed by humans, animals and machines, and shaped by the environments through which they move. Movement becomes a form of replication: bodies following existing traces, repeating and reinforcing what has already been made.

Hill uses clay and wool to mould forms around and within the homestead stairwell, highlighting the interventions made upon the land. She considers how trees were felled to make way for colonial pastures; how timber was transformed into architectural structures, and how the landscape was reshaped through processes of removal, replacement and construction. Clay becomes a material of memory and history, holding the possibility of form and reformation. Malleable and continually changing, it evokes the earth as a body that holds what exists and grows above it.

In desireline, small interventions throughout the Pah Homestead reference and utilise the building’s unique architectural details, responding to the ways its spaces have changed over time. These gestures invite a slow contemplation of the details held within both the building and surrounding grounds, drawing attention to overlooked spaces and traces of use. Across the exhibition, land is not treated as passive ground, but as something continually shaped through movement, occupation, memory and time. Paths emerge, disappear and emerge again. Bodies leave traces; traces guide bodies. What remains is never entirely fixed.