Holly Hendry: (Un)monumenting
Holly Hendry presents Slackwater as part of the (Un)monumenting program series at NDSM, alongside Sunset in Amsterdam by Mike Rijnierse and Ludmila Rodrigues.
Originally commissioned by theCOLAB, The Artist’s Garden, London, (2023), Slackwater emerged as an immense sculptural entanglement that weaved together the watery history of its riverside location, with references to the abstract rhythms of the Thames and liquid movements within the human body.
For the adaptation of Slackwater at NDSM Hendry has interwoven a pipeline system (found throughout NDSM) with the grounds and its history. The artist uses metal pipes like the guts of a space, as a way to look at larger systems and the social fabric of a place or city. With Slackwater, Hendry connects these industrial materials of steel pipes and cable coils to the maritime histories on NDSM.
Placed on one of the ship ramps (the Y-slope of NDSM), Hendry makes a physical translation of the intertwining of bodies (made up largely of water), the water (the IJ), the city of Amsterdam, and the urban landscape, on both a conceptual and visual level.
