SARAH JANE HENDER: UNTAMED BODIES

Working through expanded painting, Hender traces how images of bodies circulate and become part of our lived experience.

Hender describes her process as an emotional, psychological and physical experience, where the outcome is unplanned. Using a cut-and-splice method, she deconstructs whole paintings before reassembling them into new collective images.

Film fragments and emotionally charged memorabilia are interwoven across their surfaces, activating figures that resist being fully known, contained or held. Instead, these figures act as psychological landscapes: bodies shaped by memory, desire, relationships and the passing of time.

Smaller, more intimate and fragmented works sit alongside the larger paintings. Some have been painted over many times, but their past remains evident, pushing through to exist within the present.

Throughout the exhibition, bodies dissolve, split apart and extend beyond familiar human forms. Limbs become roots, smoke or tendrils; faces emerge from accumulations of paint, gesso, lint, hair and domestic detritus.

Their steady gazes neither plead with nor accuse the viewer; instead, they hold our attention and ask us to acknowledge whatever looms within.