Sitting just outside the small west coast mining town of Queenstown is a saw mill – not unusual for Lutwurita/Tasmania. It’s been in the same family for three generations, and is piled high with salvaged timber. This is the site for Fell, a performance by Melbourne-based artist/choreographer Luke George (Bunny, Hundreds + Thousands, Still Lives) who grew up in a similar mill town.
This work, then, is especially charged for George, and performed in Tasmania for the first time. Not only does it embody that tension between logging and preservation; it was this small town constriction that forced George to leave Tasmania to live more openly as a gay man.
George is known for his shibari practice with ropes and bondage, moving between people and objects indiscriminately. It is not about a power play he tells me, rather a transference of energy and trust, and the responsibility that comes with that.
When performed, the role of witness also plays a role – and it is both riveting and slightly unsettling.
For the remote festival The Unconformity, audiences arriving at the mill are invited to dwell in the lumber yard first. The piles of logs echo the forms of the forested mountains that are their backdrop. It feels both ancient and urgent.
George mingles with the audience. He is quietly spoken, open and calm. He asked for volunteers to assist him to lift a log of King Billy pine, which has been hand-selected by George and sheered back so that it equals his body weight. With eyes closed, the group ceremoniously walk the coffin-like form into the industrial cathedral of the mill.
Once inside, the entire performance is silent apart from the sound of ropes and click of carabiners. Slowly, George winches up the log, at first barely off the ground and precarious as a point of balance is found between man and nature.
As the log is raised, George finds a point where he totally surrenders to its weight. He allows his body to fall back, almost cruciform, with his arms splaid wide, chest open. It is a gesture of complete resignation – complete trust.
Visually simple, it is conceptually complex. The tableaux holds an implied violence, schooled by art history, but its physicality flips that memory bank into the now. So many ideas are frozen in this single gesture.
George holds the pose with incredible stamina and strength for a prolonged period – it feels endless. Sweat is visible on his brow and drips to the floor below. The audience is transfixed.
He recovers, and then challenges himself – and the audience – by further hoisting the log mid-air, up to the full height of the ceiling. It feels like he is climbing air itself.
Read: The Unconformity review: a festival that finds its own way
At moments he will outstretch a gentle hand to his collaborator, another moment he pulls in towards it with an embrace. The tipping point of total trust comes when he positions himself under the log, succumbing to vulnerability. The energy shift is palpable. Lowering himself to the ground, he then lowers the log to rest upon himself, rolling off to one side depleted. It is an extremely physically challenging performance.
The 45 minutes is pure poetry. Audiences sit completely transfixed – silent – pondering the symbolism of this choreographed balance between man and nature. No one rushes to leave. It’s like there is this unspoken need to simply digest.
The piece was developed, like many commissions for The Unconformity, through a residency in Queenstown before being performed at The Substation, Melbourne (2023) and Liveworks (2024). The homecoming of Fell somehow completes it. It is an exquisitely powerful work.
Fell was performed at Tasmanian Special Timbers Sawmill 16-18 October, for The Unconformity 2025. ArtsHub reviewed the Tasmanian premiere.
The writer visited Queenstown as a guest of The Unconformity.
