The group exhibition at Gallery Glen Carlou, Paarl, included paintings from the artist's "Ants series".  These paintings in ink and jik explore the synchronicity between ant colonies and human urbanisation.

Elske Henderson is specifically intrigued by urban experiences and how these affect our human soul. More recently, her work has shifted towards comparing ants with urban communities, searching for metaphors and instead finding lessons in the communal living of ant colonies.

Ebb is a Group Exhibition considering the human experience of water and its mythologies.  "Ebb" was curated and exhibited at DAOR Contemporary, based in the Silo District of Cape Town Harbour.

Introducing The Trine Art Collective.

The artists of the Trine Collective are concerned with the inescapable destiny of humanity.   As artists, we respond individually to the disruptive forces which alters the ecologies of nature, the city and home.  In light of the accelerated growth of capitalist culture in our timeline, we cannot turn our attention away from these fragile ecologies. Our work is a documentation and a response to these changing ecologies as it is happening in a hypermediated world characterised by multiple crises.

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In imagining future cities, Elske Henderson’s work deals with the ways that urbanisation has and will continue to affect us. She questions our handling of continued urbanisation and our impact on the ecology of our current and future colonised planets. Using cranes, skyscrapers and references to scaffolding, her work foregrounds the fragility of our repetitive patterns of construction and destruction. Concerned with issues such as overpopulation, massive urbanisation and exploding metropolises, Henderson probes the loss and search for the human soul in our urbanised world.

This exhibition deals with loss… specifically the loss of an unborn child early in pregnancy.

Miscarriages are common, occurring in up to 50% of all first trimester pregnancies (often without the woman knowing she was pregnant) and in up to 30% of recognised early pregnancies. That is one in four known pregnancies ending before birth – in a so-called “failed pregnancy”. And among 50 000 child-bearing women interviewed, 43% revealed they had experienced one or more miscarriages.  

Yet in Western society the subject is covered in a veil of silence. There is no social ritual for mourning an unborn child.  Since miscarriages are so frequent, the expectant mother is told not to announce she is pregnant until at least month four. If she miscarries before that date, she is left alone and silent in her grief. 

In this exhibition a ritual is suggested to break the silence. Suspended boats made of white gauze is used as a metaphor for the empty cradle, transporting the unborn across the mythical River Styx to the underworld of Ancient Greek lore, where their souls wait to be born into a new body. The white gauze is used as material to represent bandages for the healing of the pain of miscarriage, providing a cocoon of comfort for the mother and child. The installation of the boats and other works becomes a funerary ritual for mourning and healing.