Tamara Henderson

Tamara Henderson’s project Womb Life began when the artist was hypnotized by the hypnotist Marcos Lutyens, whose voice we also hear in the film. The film shows how the artist’s inner journey develops into a series of different expressions. The boundaries between the artist’s body and the materials and places she works with are perceived in the film as fluid, and the artist appears to have only partial control over the creative process. The course of events plays out through five sculptural characters who are all in a state of constant change. Their confrontations with light, earth, fire, and water give rise to new forms, sounds, and movements. Inner images are given form in various materials that fall apart, are transformed or subsumed into new contexts. At the same time, the film suggests that Henderson is pregnant, a creating process that is reflected in her work with the sculptures and their various phases of genesis.

Tamara Henderson would like to thank Aude Levere, Loz Chalk, Jake Tilbury, Ezgi Bayazit, Emily Carne, Benjamin Stephenson, and Oliver Bancroft (editor, sound and image) for their support.

Tamara Henderson (b.1982 in New Brunswick, Canada) lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Womb Life at Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2018), Seasons End: More Than Suitcases at Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2018). Group exhibitions include Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement Geneve (2018), Insomnia at Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2016), Life Itself at Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2016), and documenta 13 (2012).

Artwork

Womb Life
2018–2019
16 mm film transferred to digital video
Sound and image edited by Oliver Bancroft
55 min 37 sec
Courtesy the artist and Rodeo Gallery, London / Piraeus

Venue

Röda Sten Konsthall

 

Image: Womb Life, Tamara Henderson, 2018–2019. Photo: Hendrik Zeitler