Painting & Printmaking School of Fine Art
Kit Henderson
I am interested in our perception of place and the distinctions made between natural and unnatural, human and non-human, in the context of landscape. Commenting on the transient nature of the value we assign to things and the insights our relationship with them reveals, I often depict unexpected elements of landscape challenging perceptions of what we consider to be pure. Creating archives and assemblages of place, I blend representational records with phenomenological ones. Through an iterative process of filming, photographing, overpainting and painting, I question the authenticity of representations of place and invite the viewer to consider how they interact with landscape, encouraging an appreciation of the vital materiality of what lies beneath their feet. My practice is shaped by New Materialist theories of agency in non-human actors. It culminates in a joyful appreciation of the opportunities for enchantment in the age of the Anthropocene, and the likely positive effect these enchantments can have in our treatment of our environment.
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Dig: Opportunities for Enchantment.
This body of work concerns a small section of rural land no bigger than the average living room; a cross section, revealed by a small landslip and a quasi-archeological dig. A cache of found things and site visits resulted in an assemblage, a ‘community of beings’, accompanied by a series of over-painted photographs of re-imagined places created to rehome them – a ‘living room landscape’. This ‘careful looking’, at a small area of land aims to encourage an appreciation of the vital materiality of our environment and a more intimate engagement with landscape and the art representing it.
Artefacts: A community of beings.
This collection of found things had been buried for many years; an old farm ‘coup’, long grown over, exposed by a landslip. They had long lost their functional identity. Domestic and agricultural detritus joined together by clay and rust to make hybrid things ; new stones and stories—geological formations of the Anthropocene. Decontextualized, they belonged to each other. The land, of course, belongs to itself.
