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Caroline
Esbenshade

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I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the country on which I live and work and their connections to the land. I pay my respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Indigenous peoples today.
©2026 Caroline Esbenshade
Caroline 
Esbenshade

other

Installations

Installation appears intermittenly in my ptractice when an idea or project requires spatial or performative extension.



Danaë (2026)

13,000 plastic gold coins and soundscape
duration 5min 30sec, dimensions variable

Danaë (2026), installation of plastic gold coins and soundscape, variable. Photo: Leon Schoots Danaë (2026), installation of plastic gold coins and soundscape, variable. Photo: Leon Schoots Danaë (2026), installation of plastic gold coins and soundscape, variable. Photo: Leon Schoots Danaë (2026), installation of plastic gold coins and soundscape, variable. Photo: Leon Schoots
Danaë (2026) is an installation consisting of a sprawling pile of plastic gold coins and a soft soundscape of coins slowly clinking together. The work references the mythological figure of Danaë and the conception of the ancient Greek hero Perseus. According to the myth, Danaë was imprisoned by her father, who sought to prevent a prophecy that her son would one day kill him. While hidden from the gaze and reach of mortal men, she was not beyond the desire of the god Zeus. Transforming himself into a shower of gold, Zeus entered her chamber and impregnated her.

This work foregrounds Danaë’s story while refusing the voyeuristic spectacle that has traditionally accompanied depictions of the myth. Historically, paintings such as Danaë (c.1900) by Carolus-Duran, as well as earlier versions by Titian and Rembrandt, portray Danaë nude, laying across a bed with a smattering of gold coins falling from the air, sometimes even landing in her naked lap. In these works, like so many others in the canon of art history, classical mythology often provides a cultural pretext for presenting the female nude to the viewer.

Conversely, Esbenshade’s Danaë removes the body entirely. Rather than gold coins falling onto a nude, prone woman, audiences are left to look at a hollow symbol of wealth and hear its empty echo. By withholding the image of Danaë herself, attention shifts to the symbolic language of wealth, power, and access embedded in the myth and invites reflection on how stories and images have historically shaped women’s visibility, agency, and autonomy.



Soundscape recorded at AR Recording Studio and produced by Daniel Reeves.

Odyseey in Neon (2017)

public art installation

Odyssey in Neon (2017), neon sign public art installation, 35x150cm [sign] Odyssey in Neon (2017), neon sign public art installation, 35x150cm [sign] Odyssey in Neon (2017), neon sign public art installation, 35x150cm [sign] Odyssey in Neon (2017), neon sign public art installation, 35x150cm [sign]
Odyssey in Neon was s a site-specific installation consisting of a red neon sign reading ‘O Muse’, installed in the historic weighbridge on Watton Street, Werribee, Victoria. The phrase references the opening line of Homer’s Odyssey, in which the narrator invokes the Muse—the divine embodiment of creativity—to help tell the story of Odysseus’s long and arduous journey home from the Trojan War.


O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus,
sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who,
after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy,
was made to stay grievously about the coasts of men,
the sport of their customs, good and bad,
while his heart, through all the sea-faring,
ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home.
Vain hope – for them.
The fools!
Their own witlessness cast them aside.
To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun,
wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return.
Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse.
– from Homer’s Odyssey, translation by T.E. Lawrence