I am interested in Hendry’s handling of the scientific research which directly influences her work. Especially in how she references anatomy diagrams, loosening them just enough from that medical realm to lose that clean cut clinic-ality but keeping it in close enough contact to still be able to reference these diagrams as a viewer. I will be using my own medical and scientific references to underpin my research around the breath/breathing, using it as matter, to then give substance to something which is relatively intangible. Here, I feel as though Hendry’s material and sculptural ability to be site responsive extends really well in being able to represent the body as ‘site’ and giving physicality to those otherwise inside and hidden spaces.

​

Her works are imbued with a sense of action whether the objects are moving or not, installations are caught in an act of transition. This sense of materialised actions is present within my own work, and I want to examine this similarity further. In some works, Hendry has moving elements, small motors, and I love this idea that Hendry sees them as “twitching with life in some way…a suggestion of bodily movement” (Stephen Friedman Gallery, 2021). These small kinetic elements are a key influence for me to explore inflating and deflating objects and how I can make my works suggest bodily movements of their own. 

​

This sense of materialised actions happens through Hendry’s investment in really challenging the materials she uses ‘in trying to get to the bottom of why something feels or acts a certain way - the language of materials and why we are drawn to things’ (Stephen Friedman Gallery, 2021). Speaking through materials is a concept that I find so interesting and I feel I am having a similar conversation. As Hendry says, ‘by changing materials’ properties, they can become something that registers space or people or tactility or emotion. It’s also exciting to challenge the materials and to see how far something can be pushed’ (Stephen Friedman Gallery, 2021).

​

It is through my research into Hendry’s work that I have been able to find a way to articulate much of this material conversation, especially in finding a way to explain my metalwork lines. As Hendry is an artist who combines hard steel lines with softer and squishy materials also, I feel she marries them up with great success. She sees the metal work as ‘form[ing] the rigid backbone...that the other materials undo, they are the splashy, sloppy things’ (Stephen Friedman Gallery, 2021). Seeing the metal as a kind of ‘skeleton’ (Stephen Friedman Gallery, 2021), or backbone, gives it this function of fundamental support, holding together all the various other parts. I did not realise this relationship in my own work until I read through Hendry’s words around it.

On the subject of words, her use of titles will also be of direct influence on the titling of my own pieces. She often directly exposes a bodily reference where the works on their own otherwise might not. The titles pinpoint it in a physical and conceptual space that invites the viewer into the dialogue, adding an extra layer of activation to the subject, space, and consequent response.