Tantramar: The Eight Legs of Life
Tamara Henderson

In her sec­ond solo exhi­bi­tion at PALAS, Tama­ra Hen­der­son presents Tantra­mar: The Eight Legs of Life, an evolv­ing body of work first devel­oped for War­rnam­bool Art Gallery.

Expand­ing her mytho­log­i­cal lex­i­con, Hen­der­son revis­its the recur­ring fig­ures of Sound Shep­ard and Sun­spi­der, and unearths their alchem­i­cal coun­ter­part, Wiseguide. Embody­ing the tantric dual­i­ties of move­ment and still­ness, these cos­mic com­pan­ions drift through a ter­rain where sculp­ture, paint­ing, and sound sway togeth­er in a hyp­not­ic groove.

In dia­logue with the unseen sys­tems of life, rhythm, and trans­for­ma­tion, Hen­der­son evokes a dense, fer­tile murk — a sus­tain­ing ground that holds her nar­ra­tive and nour­ish­es the evolv­ing ecosys­tem of sculp­ture, paint­ing, and sound. This con­ver­gence of forms and fig­ures points toward the qui­et play of mys­tery and form that cours­es through her prac­tice — and toward Mar, the sea that car­ried them all here.

- Julia Dunne

Inter­view: Tama­ra Hen­der­son and Micky Schu­bert, Cura­tor, War­rnam­bool Art Gallery

Micky: Your War­rnam­bool Art Gallery exhi­bi­tion builds on your show at Cam­den Art Cen­tre, where you intro­duced four char­ac­ters: Direc­tor, Gar­den­er, Light, and Sound. Here, you are focus­ing on Light. Could you elab­o­rate on the sig­nif­i­cance of these char­ac­ters and how Light in par­tic­u­lar is devel­oped in this iteration?

Tama­ra: Just as human iden­ti­ty forms through pat­terns of behav­iour and response, mate­ri­als too pos­sess their own inher­ent behav­iours and pat­terns. Glass responds pre­dictably to heat and manip­u­la­tion, light bends and refracts in con­sis­tent ways. These mate­r­i­al behav­iours become part of the character’s iden­ti­ty. The way they inter­act with space, light, and ener­gy cre­ates a unique enti­ty that tran­scends its phys­i­cal form.

In film and the­atre, char­ac­ter sketch­ing is a process of gath­er­ing traits man­ner­isms and qual­i­ties that will even­tu­al­ly be embod­ied by a per­former, a prac­tice root­ed in wit­ness­ing and trans­la­tion. My artis­tic prac­tise adapts this method­ol­o­gy while diverg­ing from tra­di­tion­al lin­ear nar­ra­tives and human per­form­ers. I work with mate­ri­als, medi­ums, objects and ener­gies which emerge from var­i­ous seeds: lived expe­ri­ence, objects trou­vé, dreams, research, ref­er­ences, obser­va­tion. Once estab­lished they become arche­type like ves­sels that can be expand­ed, filled, defined, pruned or weight­ed with mean­ing. A char­ac­ter might evolve into an entire room, mise en scéne, be of phys­i­cal­i­ty or of ener­gy, capa­ble of shapeshift­ing across time and space, dis­ap­pear­ing and re-emerg­ing in new forms.

Green in the Grooves emerged through a process of dis­til­la­tion, gaz­ing into the crys­tal ball of pre­vi­ous char­ac­ter bod­ies: Sea­sons End (50 char­ac­ters), Womblife (5), and Can­ber­ran Char­ac­ters (13). These enti­ties were metaphor­i­cal­ly placed in a com­post bin of mind and body, alchemis­ing into four essen­tial forces: Light, Direc­tor, Gard­ner and Sound. This numerol­o­gy reveals a lan­guage that speaks to cin­e­mat­ic struc­ture. The Direc­tor main­tains vision and pro­jec­tion, while Sound bridges both past and present con­nect­ing us to bio­pho­ny and land­scapes both acces­si­ble and hid­den to the naked ear. The Gar­den­er emerged as both sub­ject and a tal­ent, a muse explor­ing sym­bio­sis, a dis­ci­ple of the soil, mov­ing at plant pace, cast­ing a rev­er­ent gaze downward.

Light illu­mi­nates not only the scene but embod­ies vital ener­gy for both human and plan­e­tary exis­tence. A plant receives light from the sun, a star 149 mil­lion kilo­me­tres away, con­vert­ing it into oxy­gen through a process of pho­to­syn­the­sis for bio­log­i­cal life. Through this the­o­ry of sim­i­lar­i­ty, the body can be under­stood as a reflec­tion of the uni­verse, where earth­ly rhythms are essen­tial to both phys­i­cal and psy­chic well­be­ing. In Green in the Grooves, the prin­ci­ple of light emerged as a char­ac­ter con­cerned with the sun, moon and shad­ow — a trans­for­ma­tive ener­gy and source of vision­ary insight. The paint­ings emerged as exten­sions of body and mind, fol­low­ing trata­ka med­i­ta­tion where aux­il­iary func­tion is sus­pend­ed and focus is fixed on the flame of a can­dle for an extend­ed duration.

The Spi­der with the Glass Legs instal­la­tion deep­ens this estab­lished char­ac­ter. Like a cin­e­mat­ic track­ing shot ascend­ing tratakas glass body, uncoil­ing like a snake to a bloom of petals poised at the flame’s edge. As the cam­era con­tin­ues to pan. This con­cen­trat­ed light of aware­ness pen­e­trates the shad­ows of a for­mer self, reveal­ing an eight limbed enti­ty, the Sun­spi­der, jacked, groovy and grounded.

Sun­spi­der merges two potent sym­bols: the sun, rep­re­sent­ing light, life, acti­va­tion, and pow­er, and the spi­der, evok­ing myths like Ovid’s tale of Arachne-sym­bol­is­ing trans­for­ma­tion, fate and inter­con­nect­ed­ness of web-spin­ning. How do you engage with these sym­bol­ic asso­ci­a­tions in your work? Do you see the Sun­spi­der as a syn­the­sis of oppo­si­tion­al forces, or does it rep­re­sent some­thing else entirely?

The Sun­spi­der is an eight-limbed enlight­ened trans­la­tor organ­is­ing mean­ing and ener­gy. While it echoes ancient mytho­log­i­cal tra­di­tions, it main­tains its own mod­ern pos­ture and sta­tus. Draw­ing from tantric wis­dom, it alchemis­es oppo­si­tion­al forces, open­ing flood­gates to weave webs of light into real­i­ty. Like its arach­nid inspi­ra­tion, whose web-weav­ing man­i­fests as both func­tion­al archi­tec­ture and nat­ur­al art­work, this form embod­ies syn­er­gy through decon­struc­tion and trans­for­ma­tion, weav­ing togeth­er light and shad­ow, cre­ation and destruc­tion, in its search for balance.

At its core sits the Her­mit who trans­forms into Wiseguide, a pres­ence that gazes simul­ta­ne­ous­ly into the future and past, enter­tain­ing emer­ald eggs, poi­so­nous snakes and the sun. In Spi­der with the

Glass Legs, this enti­ty man­i­fests in vari­a­tion of itself, a trin­i­ty of image, form and shad­ow, a mul­ti­coloured jug­gler of crys­tal spheres. As fur­ni­ture, these spheres become ground­ing mech­a­nisms, ves­sels of

illu­mi­na­tion. The Sunspider’s pres­ence extends through illu­mi­nat­ed glass webs- wall sconces that cap­ture and trans­form light while hold­ing var­i­ous totems with­in their strands: time­pieces, flow­ers, shards, the Direc­tor. Like dream­catch­ers, these woven glass works become repos­i­to­ries of sym­bols and mean­ing. The instal­la­tion extends beyond visu­al realm through sound, prop­a­gat­ing its orig­i­nal sound­track from Womb Life (2018) as an acoustic atmos­pher­ic web through­out the space, while the sculp­tur­al form rests in its illu­mi­nat­ed lair.

Weav­ing is a strong theme in your cur­rent show, but ulti­mate­ly it also seems fun­da­men­tal to your artis­tic prac­tice, as you weave togeth­er dif­fer­ent works, mate­ri­als and expe­ri­ences in time col­lid­ing the past with the pres­ence and open­ing up pos­si­bil­i­ties for the future across mul­ti­ple hori­zons. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly evi­dent in your use of sound. As you men­tioned, the sound­track was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed for Womb Life in 2018, then reworked for the film in Lon­don, and now appears in War­rnam­bool in a new­ly mod­i­fied ver­sion. On one lev­el, the sound weaves togeth­er the entire exhi­bi­tion, offer­ing the audi­ence a mul­ti-sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence, on anoth­er it engages with a philo­soph­i­cal under­stand­ing of time as a pri­mor­dial, embod­ied tem­po­ral­i­ty, one that emerges through per­cep­tion, where the past remains active in the present, and the future is always antic­i­pat­ed in every act of expe­ri­ence. Dif­fer­ent tem­po­ral dimen­sions coex­ist and shape one anoth­er, cre­at­ing a dynam­ic flow1. You also touched on this inter­play of past, present, and future in the trans­for­ma­tion of the Her­mit into the Wiseguide. Could you explore this idea further?

Super­po­si­tion in quan­tum mechan­ics sug­gests that a par­ti­cle can exist in mul­ti­ple states simul­ta­ne­ous­ly until observed. Sim­i­lar­ly, an art­work man­i­fests ener­gy har­nessed from both col­lec­tive and indi­vid­ual effort, exist­ing in mul­ti­ple poten­tial states at once. The gallery becomes a pri­mor­dial loom, weav­ing quan­tum threads of time, space and energy.

Like tra­di­tion­al weav­ing, where the warp pro­vides the fun­da­men­tal struc­ture, my prac­tice is anchored by a con­sis­tent method­ol­o­gy of char­ac­ter build­ing and ener­gy trans­la­tion. This method­olog­i­cal warp cre­ates a foun­da­tion through which var­i­ous ele­ments and medi­ums weave their way as the weft, cre­at­ing a fab­ric of meaning.

In Spi­der with the Glass Legs, the Sun­spi­der emanates as the cen­tral state of ener­gy, its traits man­i­fest­ed through var­i­ous expres­sions in the space. The sound­scape com­posed by Johan Bjork and Char­lie Knox trans­lates the Sunspider’s inter­nal rhythms into audi­ble fre­quen­cies, evolv­ing from nat­ur­al ambi­ence toward cos­mic dimen­sion. Just as the phys­i­cal hori­zon sug­gests infi­nite space beyond what we can see, the inter­nal sound of con­scious­ness reveals a hori­zon of ​‘begin­ning­less­ness’ and ​‘end­less­ness’ like the pri­mor­dial res­o­nance heard in a seashell. This son­ic dimen­sion oper­ates simul­ta­ne­ous­ly on phys­i­cal and meta­phys­i­cal planes, con­nect­ing us to a vast web that has been weav­ing itself for mil­lenia. The result­ing com­po­si­tion is the Sunspider’s own vocal­i­sa­tion of these cos­mic prin­ci­ples — a groovy, dynam­ic ecosys­tem of sound that invites lis­ten­ers to expe­ri­ence its ener­getic pulse from the inside out.

The Wise Guide emerged from the Her­mit, rep­re­sent­ing both a per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion and a uni­ver­sal arche­type of inner heal­ing. Sit­u­at­ed at the Sunspider’s core (its solar plexus) the Wise Guide embod­ies essen­tial qual­i­ties of bal­ance, sta­bil­i­ty, growth and courage, anchor­ing the entity’s ener­getic anato­my in deep time, con­nect­ing present con­scious­ness to ancient wis­dom. Through auto­mat­ic paint­ing tech­niques, this fig­ure mate­ri­alised as a ground­ed pres­ence, undu­lat­ing from earth­en browns to vital greens, crowned with illu­mi­nat­ed yel­low, a bridge between pri­mor­dial depths and con­scious awak­en­ing. This rela­tion­ship between the Wise Guide and Sun­spi­der embod­ies Tantric prin­ci­ples of trans­for­ma­tion, where oppos­ing ener­gies merge into uni­ty. Two gates in the instal­la­tion fur­ther explore this dual­i­ty, rep­re­sent­ing the Shad­ow aspects of both enti­ties. Like the ancient prac­tice of work­ing with mas­cu­line and fem­i­nine ener­gies, these ele­ments, one earth­bound and one cos­mic, weave togeth­er to cre­ate a com­plete spir­i­tu­al ecology.

You men­tioned that you study dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als, their behav­iours and pat­terns. Your prac­tice involves an intri­cate dia­logue between mate­r­i­al intel­li­gence, sen­so­ry per­cep­tion, and sym­bol­ic trans­for­ma­tion. In this exhi­bi­tion, glass takes on mul­ti­ple roles: as a ves­sel for light, a struc­tur­al form, and a web of mean­ing. How do you see glass as an active agent in your work, and what draws you to its par­tic­u­lar qual­i­ties of trans­paren­cy, fragili­ty, and transformation?

Glass exists as both pri­mor­dial mat­ter and human inno­va­tion — found in lunar soil sam­ples and vol­canic for­ma­tion while also emerg­ing from our ear­li­est attempts at mate­r­i­al alche­my. The basic recipe for glass has remained remark­ably con­sis­tent since its first doc­u­men­ta­tion on cuneiform tablets in the 17^th cen­tu­ry BC — sand trans­formed by heat, sta­bilised by min­er­als. Whether nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring as obsid­i­an or craft­ed in a fur­nace, glass embod­ies a unique state of mat­ter, nei­ther ful­ly sol­id nor liq­uid. As a mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el, its atoms main­tain the ran­dom arrange­ment of a liq­uid while pre­sent­ing as sol­id at room tem­per­a­ture, a para­dox that speaks to its lim­i­nal nature. Today, this same mate­r­i­al that touch­es near­ly every facet of dai­ly life con­tin­ues to hold mysteries.

In a recent dream from ear­ly April, I found myself apply­ing a mys­te­ri­ous sub­stance to the sur­face of glass pieces in the stu­dio, allow­ing them to oxi­dize — to breathe like liv­ing organ­isms. This inter­sec­tion between the mate­r­i­al and the meta­phys­i­cal recalls André Breton’s prin­ci­ple of Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Ves­sels, where dream and wak­ing life flow into each oth­er like con­nect­ed liq­uids seek­ing equi­lib­ri­um. Bre­ton describes dreams as ​‘enabling cap­il­lary tis­sue’ between the exte­ri­or world of facts and the inte­ri­or world of emo­tions — a per­me­able mem­brane between real­i­ty and imagination.

In 2017 this prin­ci­ple mate­ri­alised when we col­lab­o­rat­ed with a mas­ter chem­istry glass­blow­er in Van­cou­ver whose oth­er­world­ly pres­ence and devo­tion to his craft equat­ed to evok­ing a Philip K Dick Char­ac­ter, prompt­ing us to title the work, ​‘Galac­tic Glass Heal­er’. Like Dick’s Galac­tic Pot Heal­er who could recre­ate entire ves­sels from shards of their for­mer selves, my prac­tice con­tin­ues to exca­vate and trans­form emer­gent enti­ties, not through direct rep­re­sen­ta­tion but through a sur­re­al­ist method­ol­o­gy of allow­ing char­ac­ters to arise from the inter­sec­tion of dream and mate­r­i­al real­i­ty. The Sun­spi­der, like the Trata­ka flower before it, emerged not from stud­ied arach­nol­o­gy but from this lim­i­nal space where glass itself exists appear­ing sol­id, yet per­pet­u­al­ly in motion, ancient yet con­tem­po­rary, found in lunar soil sam­ples yet trans­formed dai­ly in artists’ hands.

The rela­tion­ship between artist and gaffer (a term of respect dat­ing to the 16^th cen­tu­ry for the glass­blow­er) embod­ies anoth­er form of com­mu­ni­cat­ing ves­sels, where vision flows into tech­ni­cal mas­tery. In the glo­ry hole, where glass is reheat­ed and trans­formed, ancient knowl­edge meets the inno­va­tions of the present. I wit­nessed this alche­my at Can­ber­ra Glass­works, the largest glass facil­i­ty in the south­ern hemi­sphere, where the molten space becomes a mag­i­cal por­tal of quan­tum syn­chronic­i­ty. Work­ing with mas­ter glass artists like Net­ty, whose Libran sense of bal­ance (born one day after me in 1982) seems cos­mi­cal­ly aligned with glass’s nature, I watch in awe as she nego­ti­ates with mate­r­i­al that exists between states. Like a mes­meris­ing dance with grav­i­ty itself, the gaffer must keep the glass in con­stant rota­tion on the pun­ty. This per­pet­u­al motion becomes a con­cen­tric rit­u­al, main­tain­ing the material’s form against the earth’s pull. Her ner­vous sys­tem, mus­cles, and breath in con­cert with the molten glass. Luna speaks of old win­dows that con­tin­ue to move, of glass that is nev­er tru­ly sta­t­ic, like a liq­uid met­al. Her eyes dance with the lumi­nos­i­ty of a crys­tal shaman — the glass com­po­si­tion that she is a mas­ter in. She revealed how dif­fer­ent glass com­po­si­tions hold light, where soda lime glass cap­tures light with sharp, can­dy like bril­liance, crys­tal embraces it with a deep­er more ethe­re­al glow. These dis­tinct qual­i­ties feel like dif­fer­ent species of light bear­ing plants, each with their own char­ac­ter and res­o­nance. The gaffer’s breath lit­er­al­ly becomes part of the work trapped in bub­bles that remain a tes­ta­ment to this pro­found human inter­ac­tion with the mate­r­i­al. As a film­mak­er I’m cap­ti­vat­ed by glass’s time-based nature from its liq­uid state in the fur­nace, through its trans­for­ma­tive dance with breath, move­ment and tem­per­a­ture, to its mys­te­ri­ous meta­mor­pho­sis in the anneal­er, which acts like a photographer’s dark­room where the final form devel­ops in dark­ness. This col­lab­o­ra­tion between artist and glass mas­ter cre­ates its own form of alche­my, where visions meet ancient knowl­edge in an ongo­ing dance of becoming.

~

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished for the exhi­bi­tion Spi­der with the glass legs by Tama­ra Hen­der­son, pre­sent­ed by the War­rnam­bool Art Gallery from 24 May – 26 Octo­ber 2025. © The authors, artists and War­rnam­bool Art Gallery, 2025.