Carolyn Eskdale: Memory Horizon

Carolyn Eskdale, Memory Horizon (Installation View, 2020) - courtesy of Heide Museum of Modern ArtFeaturing a series of room-scale site-specific sculptures, Heide Museum of Modern Art presents Memory Horizon – an exhibition of new work by Australian artist, Carolyn Eskdale, on display until 14 June 2020.

Memory Horizon responds to the unique modernist architecture of Heide Modern and animates the former residence as its own cast object. Carolyn Eskdale’s installations in domestic and public spaces trace the way we physically and psychically inhabit the world, creating a dialogue between the body’s sense and the mind’s view.

For Memory Horizon she worked in Heide Modern in solitude for several months making ephemeral structures from cardboard in each of the rooms and developing a sculptural language of motifs and forms specific to the building’s character and history.

The exhibition presents photographs of these temporary in-situ works in conversation with new sculptures and insertions that activate or obscure access to the spaces within the building, altering visitors’ experiences of them. In layering past procedures and present conditions, Eskdale explores the interstices between private and public life and the overlap between the studio and the gallery.

“The award-winning Heide Modern was conceived by the museum’s founders John and Sunday Reed as a gallery to be lived in,” says Heide Artistic Director Lesley Harding. “This new exhibition by Carolyn Eskdale delves into the Reeds’ original motives and ambitions for the building, reflecting on its history and suggesting new and poetic possibilities for its future.”

Carolyn Eskdale lives and works in Melbourne and has exhibited across Australia, Asia and the UK. Her work has been commissioned for major exhibitions including Claustrophobia at IKON Gallery, Birmingham UK; All This and Heaven Too, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia; and On Reason and Emotion, Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Recent group exhibitions include Infrastructuralism at La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo in 2018, The Material Turn at Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne in 2015 and Louise Bourgeois and Australian Artists at Heide Museum of Modern Art in 2013.

Eskdale has received numerous awards and grants, including Australia Council for the Arts project grants and residencies, and in 2019 was awarded a PhD from the Victorian College of the Arts. She is a lecturer in the School of Art, RMIT University, Melbourne and Hong Kong, and is represented by Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne.


Carolyn Eskdale: Memory Horizon
Heide Museum of Modern Art, 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen
Exhibition continues to 14 June 2020
Entry fees apply

For more information, visit: www.heide.com.au for details.

Image: Carolyn Eskdale, Memory Horizon (Installation View, 2020) – courtesy of Heide Museum of Modern Art