Luke Cornish: one of Canberra’s pioneering street artists. Photo: Luke Cornish.
Luke Cornish – or to use his official tag, ‘ELK’ – was doing street art in Canberra even before it was hip.
“It just wasn’t embraced the way it is now,” he says.
“Like when you go into Braddon now, there’s a mural on every wall – it’s really sort of revitalised that part of the city. I don’t even think street art was taboo. It just wasn’t there.”
The 46-year-old Sydney resident is now famous around the world for his stencil art, which involves cutting out sheets of recycled acetate with a scalpel and spraying paint through them – often in more than 200 colours and more than 100 layers.
His portrait of former prime minister Bob Hawke is kept by the National Portrait Gallery, while he made history in 2012 as the first stencil artist to be named a finalist in the Archibald Prize.
The Pity of War won Luke Cornish the 2024 Gallipoli Art Prize. Photo: Luke Cornish.
Last year, his work The Pity of War won the Gallipoli Art Prize – an award especially close to his heart.
“My great grandfather was an ANZAC at Gallipoli and passed away when he got back of stomach cancer when my grandmother was two,” he says.
Luke’s life – from growing up on the ACT’s northside to where he is today, a self-confessed “retiree” – is showcased in a new book, ELK – The Stencil Art of Luke Cornish.
Author and long-time friend Kevin McGregor along with A New Approach CEO Kate Fielding will join Luke to officially launch the book at a public event at the National Library of Australia on Thursday, 17 July.
“It’s nice to have that recognition … and having my career in print is a good feeling. It makes me feel like I didn’t waste my life.”
Luke has always loved art. But until he was at least in his late 20s, “there was never an idea I was going to be an artist”.
He worked as a sign writer and landscape designer before taking up stencil art as a hobby in the early 2000s. Only when he started exhibiting his work at the age of about 29 could he pull together the funds to uproot and move to Melbourne – just as street art entered a boom on the back of the Iraq war.
“It was really serendipitous and just so inspirational to see the streets of Melbourne,” he says.
“Growing up in Canberra, without having train lines, I wasn’t exposed to graffiti culture the way I was there.”
In 2012, Luke Cornish became the first stencil artist to be named finalist in the Archibald Prize with this painting of ‘Father Bob’. Photo: Luke Cornish.
He says using stencils gave him a “stealthy way of getting an instant message out there to the public”. As for the objects, “it’s always about the human experience”.
“I take a fairly humanist approach to my artwork – some of it can be calling out the rise of authoritarianism, some of it can just be a plain old portrait, but it’s always about humans.”
As for the ELK tag? That’s a reference to the elkhorn fern (platycerium bifurcatum), a native to south-east Australian forests which grows on other trees or surfaces.
“I just liked the way this plant grew on the tree, but it didn’t feed off the tree. That’s how I saw myself as an artist too – integrally attached to this huge scene that was going on in other cities, but also just doing my own thing,” he says.
Recognise these faces? Photos: Luke Cornish.
“I’m very fortunate. I have no-one to answer to in my life apart from my wife – and the ATO – but art is just becoming who I am now. I don’t want to do anything else.”
Most of Luke’s public Canberra work is gone now – with the exception of the faces along the retaining walls in Ainslie Place in Civic (near the Canberra Times Fountain).
“It was Harmony Week and the ACT Government commissioned me to do a mural on those walls,” he recalls.
“It was a pretty awkward space to paint on, so I had this idea I’d do a snapshot of different faces from different ethnicities and people in my life.
“It’s funny though – the faces were only supposed to be there for three months. It’s coming up to 20 years and they’re still there, obviously touched up a bit.”
The Book Launch: The stencil art of Luke Cornish will be held at the National Library of Australia from 6 to 7:30 pm, Thursday, 17 July. Entry is free but bookings are essential. Book online.
