Tamara Henderson

Green in the Grooves

★★★★☆

On until 30 December 2023

Having spent years tending to her garden in Australia, Henderson built a utopian version of it in Camden. There are imaginary plants and imaginary creatures everywhere. Some, like a sound installation of earthworms, may be real and alive. An army of scarecrow gardeners watches over this plot.

All is tranquil and whimsical until even the gallery gives way to decay. Things fall apart, elegantly. In three ornately framed paintings, a quartet of frogs become consumed by abstraction. Bronze and clay creatures emerge from dirt heaps to be absorbed by them again. In a sure sign of the end times, the plants have eyes. But to bring solace, a blissfully plotless film tracks the growth and decline of Henderson’s backyard, revealing that these cycles are one.

Dust to dust, joy to joy. The whole thing feels like a remake of Wind in the Willows directed by a garden gnome. But this gnome is one of Henderson’s accomplices, too. The show only falters when it brings the ‘creative process’ wholesale into the gallery. Ironically, this is the exhibition’s stated aim. One room hosts a quirky greenhouse studio filled with doodles and trinkets. This structure unduly protects the artist from nature’s graceful cruelty.


notes and notices are short and curt exhibition reviews. Read more:

Donna Huddleston, Company at White Cube ★★★★☆

Donna Huddleston

Company

★★★★☆

A palpably stubborn nature unites Huddleston’s women

Wilhelm Sasnal at Sadie Coles ★★★☆☆

Wilhelm Sasnal

★★★☆☆

Only in flights of anger does this vision come close to becoming believable.

Fake Barn Country at Raven Row ★☆☆☆☆

Fake Barn Country

★☆☆☆☆

This show of nearly thirty artists makes a pitch at many extremes, failing to reach any.

Aria Dean, Abattoir at ICA ★★★☆☆

Aria Dean

Abattoir

★★★☆☆

Visuals of her own making overpower the artist.

Shu Lea Cheang at Project Native Informant ★★☆☆☆

Shu Lea Cheang

Scifi New Queer Cinema, 1994-2023

★★☆☆☆

With material this gratuitously explicit and a curator this absent, it’s a miracle that this project wasn’t shut down by the licencing, or indeed art-historical authorities.

Justin Fitzpatrick, Ballotta at Seventeen ★★★★★

Justin Fitzpatrick

Ballotta

★★★★★

The reward for taking part in this experiment of life is ascension to the holy orders. 

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