About

Saskia Folk was born in Melbourne, Australia 1978.

She lives in Australia and works in Melbourne, Thora and Central Australia.

I drove thousands of kilometers around the central desert in search of the forgotten cars that roamed Australia in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. It was a time when vehicles stood out in the landscape in shades of blue, green, red and yellow. Now laying in their resting place to rust and decay for up to sixty years, I selected pieces of them to preserve, before they were gone forever. To me they are worth their weight in steel.

I am fascinated by the colours, textures, dents and fractures of the abandoned cars I come across on my journey out bush. These car wrecks are an integral part of the landscape and history of Australia. The desert environment plays a hand in the process of deterioration and once the panel is removed it takes on a new life. The panels I select are one of a kind. They are also suggestive pieces, sometimes a mountain range or an aerial landscape is visible to me, but someone else might see something else entirely. The panel taken away from the source allows the viewer to focus on the work in a new light and contemplate whatever it brings to mind. Art history would define the pieces as “ready-mades” a concept realised by Marcel Duchamp.

A unique job opportunity bought me to the desert. I worked as a field officer for Papunya Tula Artists and spent time in Kintore (530km west of Alice Springs) and Kiwirrkurra (770km west, over the WA border). I passed numerous abandoned cars on my journey, observing the different stages of abandonment.  Once in the community there were tips full of old cars that I had free range over, most of which have now gone to various cities in the form of scrap metal. On weekends I went hunting for goanna, witchetty grubs and gathering various bush foods, again I discovered these diamonds in the rough. Now my journey takes me far and wide throughout the central desert in search of panel work.