Desire Lines is a new site-specific light installation by Nathaniel Rackowe, inhabiting the nine Thames side trees opposite the Southbank’s Royal Festival Hall. 

The title refers to a term more commonly used to describe alternate pathways and routes through space, and the worn trace of footsteps that gives them away. However in this installation the lines are of light, their flowing movement an echo of those people moving past and around them.

A bright layer of geometric form intersects each tree, the tree itself becoming a vital part of the artwork, seeming to change as light and colour sweeps across it. 

Desire Lines continues Nathaniel Rackowe’s ongoing investigations into the emotional perception of urban space, with a more recent focus on the intersection of built and natural form. 

His often large-scale urban-referenced structures and light sculptures are designed to recreate the experience of navigating the city around us, evoked through the vicissitudes of light as it fluctuates throughout the city.