Esther Forse’s work deals with the dangers and tensions of utopianism, the nature of photography, and the difficulty of how place and ‘landscape’ can be constructed. Treating found imagery from old postcards as both photographic source and an object for still life, the subject matter of model villages and film sets is used as a way to investigate world-building, the fabrication and visual communication of cultural fantasies, and collective and contested ideas of what utopia and dystopia may look like. Markers of time, such as photographic oversaturation and architectural style, are preserved and sometimes exaggerated. People - and model people - are carefully painted out, though their shadows and reflections may sometimes remain. The levels of simulation are multiple: the fake historical buildings in the fake miniature towns or studio lots, the dated photographic artefacts of the postcards (where everything is always sunny and perfect and the sender always ‘wishes you were here’), the convincing mimesis of the paintings themselves. The painting style is in sympathy with the subject matter, as both involve slow and detailed work to build a convincing facade. If there is an initial reality being referred to, it is impossible to recover.