It’s a Stick is an evolving digital artwork created by Dave Clarkson in 2025. The work explores how family histories are remembered, retold, and quietly transformed over time. Originally conceived as an installation with a living cherry tree and layered soundscape exhibited at Yorkshire Art Space, this online version invites audiences to listen to each family recording individually, creating their own pathways through a shared memory.

At the heart of the work is the story of a cherry tree once planted outside the artist’s childhood home — a tree later cut down, leaving behind only memory and fragments of narrative. Each audio track features a conversation with a different family member, reflecting on this single tree. Their accounts overlap, diverge, contradict, and circle back, revealing how memory is personal yet collectively formed.

By giving listeners control over how and when to play each recording, the online iteration mirrors the experience of walking through the installation: stories are never fixed or linear. Depending on the order and combination of play, new relationships between the voices emerge.

Here, instead of standing before a tree in a gallery, the listener navigates a living archive—one that exists only through sound, time, and memory.

(Pictured) 

It Was A Stick 2025 Installation 

Yorkshire Art Space Secret Gallery