Esther Carlin

The tree sees double

The tree sees double, comes from a year of walking and looking at the strangeness of parks. She is using writing, photographs and video taken on her phone to situate herself in this moment in time. Memory is embodied in the place that you come from and this body of work is about coming back to that place.

Esther Carlin is an artist and writer living and working in Naarm/Melbourne. Esther graduated from the Australian National University with a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) in Sculpture and Spatial Practice and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology. She makes interconnected text, photographic, film and sculptural work that draws on her dual training in art and anthropology. She has previously exhibited work at Tributary Projects and ANCA Gallery, and her film The Time of the Cévennes was shown as part of the 2020 Prototype Care Package series.

This work was made on the unceded lands of the Bunurong Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. 

Text by Emma Dowden ➜

Two lovers sit on a park bench,

Two sets of eyes seeing one place, 

Lovers return year after year like birds.

In other places trauma wells up from

the ground like water.

Covers your shoes as you pass through it. 

Repetition binds us to place over time.

Layers accumulate so the tree we climbed 

as children fades,  

Now we remember the bench beneath it.  

The tree sees double.

The tree was there long before you and I.

The tree has seen things that you and I will never see.

The tree stands.

The tree will be there long after you and I.

The tree will see things that you and I will never see.

The tree sees double

Works

CONDITIONS AT PLAY

Inkjet print

99 x 70 cm

2020

CONDITIONS AT PLAY

Inkjet print

99 x 70 cm

2020

Local Guide (the map keeps holding on)

Single channel video

4 minutes 19 seconds

2021

Fault of Memory 

Single channel video

Bench made with James Fay

8 minutes 49 seconds

2020