In the year of his death, my great-uncle, the artist Nigel Henderson, wrote a letter addressed to my future self. In his letter, he asked me to decipher a painting he made of the fossilized cliffs at Walton on the Naze in Essex, in the east of England. As a clue, he sent me a photocopied manuscript of the novel “The Fourbanks of the River of Space” by the South American novelist Wilson Harris, who lived nearby. Afterthoughts of a Walk on the Naze is a quantum fiction that attempts to answer his letter. I revisit the house and studio where he made the painting and film the surrounding seascape/riverscape and the cliffs the painting references. Harris’ book, the landscapes and the painting work together in counterpoint, revealing ideas about artistic inheritance, creation, death, weather and time.
Directed by Louis Henderson
