Tamara Henderson. Continuity the bronze wizard approves.

A wizard twenty-eight centimetres tall

Continuity the bronze wizard approves is a small work from 2023. At its heart is a cast bronze wizard with patina, 28 cm tall. With it come a eucalyptus wood box 33 cm long, pit-fired ceramic beads, a piece of eucalyptus-dyed cloth, brass hardware, incense, and matches.

The list of materials is worth reading slowly. Most of it comes from one tree. Eucalyptus wood for the box. Eucalyptus for the dye. Incense for the smell. Only the bronze and brass are metal, and the matches are there to start things.

The work was shown in Eye in the High, Tamara Henderson's exhibition at PALAS, Sydney, from 20 April to 22 June 2024.

The same exhibition held another wizard, A Natural Wizard, Eucalyptus in thought, also from 2023: a hand-sized pit-fired ceramic figure in a top hat and robe, holding a vessel of burning eucalyptus incense. The two small figures are where the show's smell begins.

Eucalyptus and the bush

Eucalyptus is Australia's tree. Its smell is warm and sharp, instantly recognised. For those who live there, it belongs to the bush, to walking tracks, to hot afternoons.

In her ArtReview review, Sarah Hetherington writes that the eucalyptus incense carries viewers into the Australian bush. It turned the white gallery into a place with temperature, soil, leaves.

The smell works at a very different scale from the object. The bronze is only 28 cm tall. You have to bend down to see it properly. The smell asks no one to bend. It spreads through the room, reaching whoever stands in the far corner, even those who have not yet seen the figure.

Hetherington also notes that the show's images linger after you leave the gallery, like the smell of eucalyptus. Smell is what follows you out. It clings to hair, to clothes, to memory.

Microbes, decay and renewal

Eye in the High was an exhibition about microbiology, about decomposition and regeneration in the natural world, and about the impact of human activity on ecosystems. Henderson used paintings, sculpture and film.

Three 2024 paintings sat in frames of steel mesh and paper clay, with titles such as A Dream, A compost, A fertile stir. A chandelier of blown glass in blue, pea green, amber and orange, with a skeletal form and five question marks, was called Director's Anchor maintains the plot. And a 16mm film, Green in the Grooves, ran for about twenty-seven minutes.

Among these, the eucalyptus incense plays a particular role. It is decomposition happening in front of you. A burning stick is matter changing: from stick to smoke, from smoke to smell, from smell to nothing. What remains is ash, which the soil will take back.

The bronze stands still and approves. The title calls this relationship continuity. The lasting thing does not resist the fleeting one. It stands beside it, watching, with matches at hand so the burning can begin again.

That may be what stays with you. Sculpture is usually made to last. This one is made so that its smell disappears, is lit again, and disappears.