Useless Money, Everyday Lists & Debt Relief

Everyday Lists, Useless Money and Debt Relief

Paintings by Jill Henderson, Text by Jenifer Papararo

"A therapy, a prayer, a mantra, a plea, a new hope for the underdogs with huge debt burdens, a realist statement, a call to arms for a revolution?" -- Jill Henderson

This descriptive list, posited by Jill Henderson as a question, refers to one of her recent text works. Painted in black outlines on a tarnished candy yellow background is the refrain “Debt Is Everywhere and Instantly Nowhere.” The paradoxical sentiment is offered as some relief. There is no need to panic about your credit card debt or your lingering student loan as they are as tangible as they are impalpable. Your debt can’t touch you; it is only language that collapses in on itself. It resides in an unknowable realm outside the room you’re in. Three small puffy clouds embellish the phrase as if they were the only remains after the smoke cleared and an arrow redirects the “nowhere” back into “everywhere.” This self-opposing statement is more lucid than absurd as Henderson insinuates that these two ominous domains have more in common than not. They are infinitely equal in scale yet hopeless impossible to locate. Their similarities negating their differing prefixes, leaving debt suspended in a nonexistent orbit—still horrific, but safely displaced.

In Useless Money (1995), a series of oval paintings of dollar signs, Henderson liquefies the monetary symbol’s value as she depicts a collection of nonchalant scribbles. The handwritten symbols disintegrate its graphic design, pulling it apart, turning it backwards and upside down, doubling it, erasing lines, melding curves and reconfiguring its core elements—all done haphazardly with no veneration for the almighty dollar’s emblem. Henderson’s rendering of these scrawls collapses the dollar sign’s worthiness as a symbol. In her meticulous representation of the original unrefined and careless reiterations, she exposes the weakness of its form, questioning the need for two vertical lines and pointing to the lazy appropriation of the capital letter ‘S’—which isn’t even inverted. The symbol all of sudden appears hackneyed, definitely not worthy of all our hopes, dreams and savings.

Henderson’s debased dollar signs are painted on a variety of bright solid colours and when they were exhibited in 1995 were hung next to painted black and white IOU notes that didn’t record the usual obligation to repay sums of money, but offered reminders to return more ethereal things like an apology or sweet dreams as well as intimate situations like dinner and the return of someone’s belongings. These IOUs capture personal exchanges that have not been translated into generic denominations and as such become the record of individual stories. Each note hints at larger narratives that begin with Henderson’s appropriation and representation of these commissioned notes. The artist asked her friends to write these messages in exchange for the painting she would turn them into. In altering and reiterating these vernacular reminders Henderson re-authors these moments, establishing their worth whilst devaluing a depersonalized economic system of exchange. The idea of debt as a noun is turned by Henderson into a state of indebtedness that describes an expressive exchange based on personalized interactions defining character and characters.

She has become a biographer of sorts. This is most evident in her list paintings. A series of text works that date back to the mid-nineties in which she painted itemized lists collected from friends, lovers, employers and strangers. All were found and each one is altered, edited in their content and formally stylized in Henderson’s idiosyncratic style. Hand-written scrawls painted over solid colours often in combinations that vibrate the text off the background or inversely push the text into the fabric of the canvas. In some, the text appears to be blown up and cropped filling the painting to its edges while in other works the lists have been edited to such brevity that only two items remain in the corner of a largely solid colour field: Soap and Sauce for example. Did someone spill sauce and need to get soap to clean it up? Or does it build anticipation that this will happen? Regardless a relationship has been established and a narrative implied.

As she paints the lists they become, or is it retain, an ambiguity to place, time and need that open speculative ponderings to whom and to why. Her latest list painting uses the grocery list taken off her fridge as its content. It is written in two languages and there is a repetition in the items, a doubling of needs repeated in Spanish and English. Henderson has quadrupled the repetition into a diptych that contains the identical words, but are reordered, inverted from top to bottom. The list was made by two people who share the same wants yet communicate in different languages. According to the original list they equally understand what the household requires, but they don’t recognize that each other know, even though they document it on the same piece of paper. Regardless of this miscommunication, Henderson has established that the two authors want to contribute, have shared concerns and transmit them in a united format.

Each painting has its unique story with a link to its original narrator who is directly addressing particular circumstances and specific needs. As the biographer, Henderson leads our attention, directing us to formulate certain conclusions. She hints. Maybe these lists are more aptly characterized as portraits, but there rests a depth in the words—how she has found them discarded and used, and interpreted them through form and colour that insinuates a broader context. For one they list things that need to be acquired with a rote ordering that is familiar to most all of as we organize our daily lives. They detail a material want for things and an intention to acquire them. Positioned across from Useless Money, Henderson renders this consumption obvious. They all become characters in an overarching narrative—this being an economic one. She is taking issue with a capitalized system that we seem to be stuck in.

Jenifer Papararo,February 2013
Curator, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver
and member of Instant Coffee



from Beauty #2, curate by Philip Monk at The Power Plant, Summer 1995

"...Jill Henderson's List Paintings may be seen within the context of a type of popular art that raises a degraded vernacular into high art through the practice of painting and placement in an art gallery. The "images" of these paintings are adapted from lists found in the street or elsewhere where they have been discarded, absentmindedly left behind, or lost. These jottings that people make for themselves, whether a grocery shopping list or a restaurant order, are not intended as public communication and thus reveal a vernacular unconscious. The colours of the paintings redirect their content in a more personalized relation to packaging. Henderson's combined work Useless Money and IOUs takes a found standard symbol, the dollar sign, and shows people's hasty variations or personalizations. Interspersed among these signs are IOUs, private transactions again made public, the scripted image a reminder both of debt and of the "performance" residue that produces the final work." -- Philip Monk, Beauty #2, (The Power Plant, Toronto, June 29 - September 1995, p.23)


Jill Henderson is a Scottish and Canadian artist who lives and works in Vancouver, she received her BFA and MFA from Glasgow School of Art, Scotland.

From 1991 to 1994 Henderson lived in Glasgow and exhibited widely in Europe including, The National Review of Live Art, ICA, London (1993); Transmission Gallery, Tramway, Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), all Glasgow, Scotland (1992/93) and Ung Skotsk Kunst, Overgaden Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (1994). In 1994 she relocated to Toronto where she was a member of the artist group Brown Spot and a co-­‐founder of Free Parking Gallery, an artist run gallery located in downtown Toronto. In 1996 to 1997 Free Parking exhibited 107 artists in one year including, Luis Jacob, FASTWURMS, Kristin Lucas, Alan Belcher, Susan Kealey, David Shrigley, Martin Boyce, Sue Tompkins and many more. Henderson’s Curatorial projects also include 30 seconds plus title, Art Gallery of Ontario, Malevolent Spirits, Genereux Grunwald Gallery, Toronto, (both 1995) and more recently ABC with Love (too cool for school), Art Metropole, Toronto (2008).

Some notable exhibitions in Canada and internationally, from 1994 to 1999, include The List Paintings Series and Useless Money exhibited in Beauty #2, The Power Plant (1995); LIST and HELP, Wynick Tuck Gallery, Toronto (1996); Penthouse 29, The New Gallery, Calgary (1998); Ground, Catalyst Arts, Belfast (1998); SHOP, Hales Gallery, London; 6 Pack, CN Tower, Toronto; Polishing the Jewel, 57 Hope, NYC and Semi-­‐casual, Brasilica, Vienna, Austria (all 1999).

From 1998 to 2008 she lived and worked in New York City and continued to exhibit internationally and in the USA including, Greater New York, PS1 MoMA, NYC (2000); FOXY, Mark Pasek Gallery, NYC (2000); SELF HELP, Vox Populi, Philadelphia (2000); Orange Marble, Taipei, Taiwan (2001); Art and Money, YYZ, Toronto (2001); Young Guns 3, The Art Directors Club, NYC (2001); Scottish Evening, Lothringer 13, Munich, Germany (2002), The Brewster Project, Brewster, NY (2003), Suggestive Line, Morris & Belkin Gallery, Vancouver (2002) and Solo exhibitions COMMUNE, The Helen Pitt Gallery, Vancouver (2002) and Highwideshallow, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2001). Recent exhibitions include The Price of Everything... Perspectives on the Art Market, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Whitney Independent Study Program, NYC (2007); Night of 1,000 drawings, Artists Space, NYC (2007); The Super Thing: A DEVO inspired Art Event, 3rd Ward Gallery, Brooklyn, NYC (2008); Fine Art Adoption Network, Pocket Utopia, Brooklyn, NYC (2008) and Bright Future, Instant Coffee, VIVO Media Arts Centre & IntransitBC, Vancouver (2009).

In 2008 Henderson returned to Canada to Vancouver, where she co-­‐founded The Drawing Salon with artist Hannah Hughes. The Drawing Salon is a nomadic program of contemporary drawing workshops and drawing performances led by guest artists and by Henderson and Hughes. 2012 Drawing Salon projects have included Vancouver artists Michael Drebert and Ron Tran and have been hosted at Malaspina Printmakers, Western Front, VIVO (Vancouver) and Cubitt Gallery (London, UK).

Henderson has also participated over the years in many live drawing events and performances with artists FASTWURMS, including, Blood & Swash, 1, 2 & 3: Zsa Zsa Gallery, Toronto, Instant Coffee/The Americas Society, NYC and Manif d’Art 2, Quebec; BLOOD CLOCK, TAAFI, Toronto; Into The Void, Tailgate performance, Mercer Union and DONKY@NINJA@WITCH, AGYU, Toronto.

Henderson has been nominated for a Louis Comfort Tiffany award and is a lifetime member of Art Metropole. Her work is in the collection of The Robert McLaughlin Museum, Oshawa and the National Gallery of Canada as well as in numerous private collections.