Spider with the Glass Legs
Tamara Henderson
Warrnambool Art Gallery

“Noth­ing exists with­out ener­gy. It’s the most essen­tial con­cept for the basis of life.” Fred Ever­s­ley[i]

In the lim­i­nal space between the tan­gi­ble and the intan­gi­ble, Tama­ra Hen­der­son con­structs a uni­verse woven from the threads of per­son­al expe­ri­ence and arche­typ­al res­o­nance. This exhi­bi­tion, an intri­cate tapes­try of sculp­ture, paint­ing, sound, light, and shad­ow, emerges through a cre­ative process that unfolds not only with­in the stu­dio but across broad­er ecolo­gies, where the indi­vid­ual and the col­lec­tive coa­lesce into a vibrant, mul­ti­fac­eted reality.

Henderson’s art is a propo­si­tion that can be expe­ri­enced as ​“a con­stant act of trans­la­tion, from one mate­r­i­al, one thought, to anoth­er.”[ii] This con­tin­u­al trans­for­ma­tion under­pins her prac­tice. Mate­ri­als become con­duits to arcane states that exist unique­ly in her work. Henderson’s process draws upon alter­na­tives to dom­i­nant West­ern par­a­digms, ref­er­enc­ing coun­ter­cul­tur­al cri­tiques of hier­ar­chi­cal and ver­ti­cal forms of organ­i­sa­tion. Instead, she embraces mul­ti­di­men­sion­al­i­ty, both in the phys­i­cal cre­ation of objects and as an onto­log­i­cal frame­work for being. This is evi­dent in the lay­ered nar­ra­tives of her instal­la­tions and the ways she builds envi­ron­ments that res­onate across mul­ti­ple sen­so­ry and con­cep­tu­al levels.

To fur­ther under­stand this mul­ti­di­men­sion­al­i­ty, a par­al­lel may be drawn to the quan­tum phe­nom­e­non of super­po­si­tion. In quan­tum physics, a sys­tem can exist in mul­ti­ple states simul­ta­ne­ous­ly until mea­sured. Only through obser­va­tion does it col­lapse into a sin­gle, defin­i­tive state. Henderson’s work behaves sim­i­lar­ly, inhab­it­ing a field of poten­tial, where mean­ings, forms, and asso­ci­a­tions remain flu­id until acti­vat­ed by the viewer’s pres­ence or per­spec­tive. Through lay­er­ing media, diverse sym­bols, and a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of nar­ra­tives, she con­structs an expe­ri­ence sus­pend­ed in a super­po­si­tion of pos­si­bil­i­ties. This open­ness becomes both a method and a form of resis­tance, a delib­er­ate depar­ture from rigid, reduc­tive modes of under­stand­ing the world.

This inter­play of poten­tial trans­for­ma­tion is embod­ied, too, in the char­ac­ters that recur across her prac­tice. Among Henderson’s cast, first intro­duced in Green in the Grooves (2023, Cam­den Art Cen­tre, Lon­don), we encounter the Gar­den­er, Direc­tor, Sound and Light, with the lat­ter tak­ing focus here in War­rnam­bool. Orig­i­nat­ing from her gar­den com­post­ing exper­i­ments, these fig­ures occu­py a porous con­tin­u­um. They appear as dif­fer­ent artic­u­la­tions of the same under­ly­ing ener­gy, exten­sions of a shared field instead of iso­lat­ed entities. 

The deep entan­gle­ment of ener­gy, psy­che, and sym­bol in Henderson’s prac­tice also evokes the lega­cy of Sur­re­al­ism. Like these pre­de­ces­sors, she employs the lan­guage of dreams, auto­mat­ic draw­ing, and altered states induced through med­i­ta­tion or hyp­no­sis, in pur­suit of intu­itive, non- ratio­nal knowl­edge. Her approach res­onates with André Bre­ton’s notion of pure psy­chic automa­tism[iii], as is the res­o­nance with Sig­mund Freud’s explo­ration of the dream as a por­tal to the uncon­scious[iv]. C.G. Jung’s exam­i­na­tion of the col­lec­tive uncon­scious offers anoth­er way of under­stand­ing Henderson’s work as both per­son­al and uni­ver­sal, root­ed in sym­bols shared across cul­tures and times.

Jung’s con­cept of arche­type, the light, the shad­ow, the wise old man/​hermit, infus­es Henderson’s visu­al lan­guage, guid­ing us through per­son­al and col­lec­tive mytholo­gies. As Jung wrote, ​“we have two forms of think­ing: direct­ed think­ing and dream […] think­ing.”[v] Henderson’s prac­tice utilis­es the lat­ter, using it to reveal alle­gor­i­cal con­nec­tions with­in and beneath mate­ri­als. Like a con­tem­po­rary shaman, Hen­der­son trans­lates the sym­bol­ic into the tan­gi­ble. Her work, like the indi­vid­ual mytholo­gies explored by Har­ald Szee­mann, [TD1] acknowl­edges that pri­vate mean­ing sys­tems are always in con­ver­sa­tion with larg­er cul­tur­al narratives.

Along­side this inner world, Hen­der­son turns our inten­tion out­ward, to the over­looked fab­ric of life and the eco­log­i­cal sys­tems that sus­tain it. By mag­ni­fy­ing the seem­ing­ly insignif­i­cant, such as the tiny spi­der, she illu­mi­nates the sub­tle ener­gies that ani­mate our world, those often unseen and for­got­ten, qui­et­ly sup­port­ing the con­tin­u­ous flow of life.

This exhi­bi­tion offers a space where quan­tum super­po­si­tion con­verges with ancient wis­dom, the indi­vid­ual and the col­lec­tive inter­twine, and the poten­tial for trans­for­ma­tion resides with­in every moment. By step­ping into the thresh­old between dream­ing and wak­ing, and con­sid­er­ing non-human realms, Hen­der­son encour­ages us to attune to the hid­den ener­gies that shape our being, recog­nis­ing the pro­found inter­con­nect­ed­ness of all that exists.

Cura­tor, Micky Schib­ert, 2025

[i] McHugh, Cami­la, Fred Ever­s­ley, A West Coast pioneer’s overview effect, Art​fo​rum​.com, Novem­ber 9, 2022 12:07pm.

[ii] Hig­gie, Jen­nifer, Sound, Gar­den­er, Direc­tor, Light, Cam­den Art Cen­tre, p. 7.

[iii] Bre­ton, André, Man­i­feste du Sur­réal­ism, Edi­tions du Sagit­taire, Paris, Octo­ber 15, 1924.

[iv] Freud, Sig­mund, Die Traumdeu­tung, Franz Deuticke, Leipzig und Wien, 1900.

[v] Jung, C.G., Psy­chol­o­gy of the Uncon­scious, A study of the Trans­for­ma­tions and Sym­bols of Libido. A Con­tri­bu­tion to the His­to­ry of the Evo­lu­tion of Thought, autho­rized Trans­la­tion, with Intro­duc­tion, by Bearice M. Hin­kle, M.D., Mof­fat, Yar’d and Com­pa­ny, New York, 1916, p.22.