Since 1995, Carolyn Eskdale has worked on an ongoing series of installations and constructions in Australia, Europe and Asia with the generic title of 'room'. These works engage with the processes of transformation and the reconstruction of living spaces; actual, remembered and imagined. While the subject of the work has been primarily private interior spaces, more recently this has extended to engage social spaces of the city, where a dialogue between the private and public is played out. Eskdale's practice responds to various spaces and forms found within interior structures, resulting in an ongoing series of contemplative and poetic installations and interventions, and seeks to refine our relation to space and memory.
Eskdale's drawing practice is equally embedded in this intrinsically sculptural practice—which is concerned with permeable sites and thresholds and the touch of her hands. Repetitive processes including moulding and kneading, picking, sewing, plucking and tracing are played out across fabrics, windows, walls, water and paper.
Eskdale’s installations explore the intimate relationship between what is personal and what is in communal... The interventions frame past moments of domesticity and inhabitation, while considering the present, and possible futures.
Gabrielle Bergman, Artshub, February 2020.