THE GARDENER’S BAR
Tamara Henderson
11 July - 29 August 2026
Exhibition Opening: Friday 10 July 2026, 6pm
Glass Fusing Workshop with Tamara Henderson, presented at Canberra Glassworks:
Saturday 1 August 2026, 1:30 - 3:30pm. Tickets available here.
Lunch Time Deep Dive with Hester Lyon:
5 + 17 August, 12:00 - 12:45pm. Free, all welcome.
Since relocating to Australia, compost has occupied a central position within Tamara Henderson’s practice: as material, method, and model of transformation. Through processes of decomposition and regeneration, Henderson constructs an ecology in which sculpture, painting, film and sound emerge through the same cycles of accumulation, decay and renewal.
Four recurring archetypes – The Gardener, The Director, Light (the Sunspider) and Sound (Country Worm/City Worm) – operate as collaborators within this ecology, together forming the expanded world of Green in the Grooves (Camden Arts Centre, London, 2023).
The Gardener’s Bar developed from this environment, first realised in London in 2023 as an ode to Henderson’s backyard Kamberri/Canberra shed. Neither sculpture nor architecture, it functions as a site of cultivation, production and exchange, holding the material residues, gestures and rhythms that circulate throughout Henderson’s practice.
Reconfigured and expanded for this exhibition, The Gardener’s Bar stands as a Gesamtkunstwerk: an all-embracing artwork and an apothecary of Henderson’s material and aesthetic language – permeable, inhabited by light, and continuously transformed through its relationship to the surrounding environment. Each glass pane of The Gardener’s Bar, newly developed for this exhibition, was produced in Kamberri/Canberra, whilst in residence at Canberra Glassworks.
The exhibition is accompanied by The Gardener’s Bar Codex, a collection of newly commissioned texts by friends and collaborators spanning two decades of Henderson’s practice, including Johannah Fahey, Kasper Feyrer, Jennifer Higgie, Tiziana La Melia, Erik Lavesson, and Luke Milne.
Artist Bio
Tamara Henderson is a pioneering artist of international significance. Her process of creation develops its own mythology out of an ongoing practice of writing, drawing, and making notations of everyday objects. Henderson’s expansive environments encompass a vast vocabulary of art and craft practices and materials, including film, painting, textile, sculptures in glass, ceramic and bronze, drawing, sound, and performance.
Henderson’s recent national and international exhibitions include New Museum (2026), Potter Museum of Art (2026), Helsinki Biennial (2025), Rivoli in Turin (2024), Artspace, Sydney (2024), Camden Art Centre (2023), and Tate Modern London (2020). Tamara Henderson is represented by PALAS, Sydney and Sylvia Kouvali, London.
Image: The Gardnener's Bar Codex. Design by Kajsa Ståhl. Courtesy the artist.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body, and supported by Canberra Glassworks, the ACT Government through artsACT and the Canada Council for the Arts.
