at home: Artists in Conversation | Holly Hendry

Holly Hendry in conversation with Phillip Edward Spradley, cultural producer. 

About Holly Hendry

Born in 1990 in London, Hendry is a British artist whose site-responsive sculptures and installations are concerned with what lives beneath the surface, from hidden underground spaces to the interior workings of the body. Her sculptures look at the back of things: cross-sections and open cracks through which you see the gooey insides. Hendry addresses ideas of permeability and morbidity through a visual language charged with cartoonish wit. Her works deal with the internal and the external in terms of the body, display, and production, revealing what would otherwise be hidden. Casting is central to Hendry’s process, in which she uses an array of materials, including charcoal, foam, grit, lipstick, soap, steel, and Jesmonite (a composite material).

Hendry earned her BA in fine art at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, and her MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art. She is a lecturer in sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art. This year she will present Lip-Sync, a permanent outdoor large-scale commission in Birmingham, UK. Hendry’s first solo show in the United States will take place at the Savannah (GA) College of Art and Design in 2024. She has exhibited internationally, with solo shows at institutions including BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2017); De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, UK (2021); Sharjah Art Foundation, United Arab Emirates (2014); and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK (2019–20). She participated in Le Biennale de Lyon (2019) and the Liverpool Biennial (2018).

Hendry was a fellow in contemporary art at the British School at Rome in 2018 and received the inaugural Arts Foundation Award for Experimental Architecture in 2019. Her work is held in the FRAC Centre Collection, France, and the Arts Council Collection, British Council Collection, and Government Art Collection, UK. Hendry lives and works in London. She is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery.