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:

Justin Fitzpatrick, Ballotta at Seventeen ★★★★★

Justin Fitzpatrick

Ballotta

★★★★★

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

Mohammed Z. Rahman, A Flame is a Petal at Phillida Reid ★★★☆☆

Mohammed Z. Rahman

A Flame is a Petal

★★★☆☆

Rahman’s zine hand makes this make-believe explicit but not plausible.

looking to the futurepast, we are treading forward, the Bolivian pavilion in Venice ★☆☆☆☆

looking to the futurepast, we are treading forward

★☆☆☆☆

The contemporary is of no interest to a nation whose future is yet to be dug out from the ground.

Some May Work as Symbols at Raven Row ★★★★☆

Some May Work as Symbols: Art Made in Brazil, 1950s–70s

★★★★☆

Art history can catch modernity in splitting from the past and thus from itself.

Thibault Aedy, Dilara Koz at Filet ★★★☆☆

Thibault Aedy, Dilara Koz

Caressed and Polished and Drained and Washed

★★★☆☆

These ideas can’t last beyond the pop-up show’s closing date.

Miranda Forrester, Arrival at Tiwani Contemporary ★★★☆☆

Miranda Forrester

Arrival

★★★☆☆

Forrester’s project is timely when foundational concepts like ‘mother’ and their ‘as-though’ counterparts are readily confused.

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