Source: https://englandgallery.com/artists/artist_bio/?mainId=51
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 12:40:01+00:00

Document:
Chris Kenny was born in London and studied art history at the Courtauld Institute. He has been exhibiting since 1985, firstly as a painter but, since the early 1990s, he has been working almost exclusively with collage and constructions.
Kenny's collage constructions bring together collections of found text with themes that are often humorous, sometimes melancholy, as he gently subverts the meanings or creates new narratives from the strips of text that he culls from discarded books. In his mapworks, which use the colours of his materials in an almost painterly way, he says that he replaces 'the cartographer's logic with an absurd imaginative system. The roads float and interact in unlikely combinations that allow one's mind to ricochet back and forth between disparate locations and associations.' The motifs of roads, parks, football pitches, dual carriageways, car parks and innumerable other routes and places are cut from maps from around the world and identified in numerous different languages. They are re-arranged in new configurations and raised like real-life spaghetti junctions. These re-workings of maps chart the very nature of place itself, and suggest, by rendering the relationships between places arbitrary and meaningless, that there is only one place in the universe.
The art historian Andrew Spira has pointed out that the immediate appearance of Kenny's works - geometrical and abstract - suggests that they belong to the pure and clear world of early modernism. This seems especially true of their discreet and elegant shades of white and grey, their subtle sensitivity to the aesthetic interest of shadows and their dependence on the constructivist materials of wood, glass, metal and paper.
Chris Kenny had six solo exhibitions at England & Co and participated in numerous gallery exhibitions, such as The Map Is Not the Territory , After a Fashion and Literary Constructs. His collage books are represented in several public collections of artists' books, including that of Tate, London. Public and corporate collections that have acquired his works from England & Co include Museum of London; Penguin Books Ltd; the Deutche Bank Collection; the Victoria and Albert Museum; the British Museum; and Hotel des Arts, Centre D'Art du Conseil General du Var, Toulon.
Au milieu de nulle part, Musee Hebert, Grenoble, France.
An implicit celebration of untotalizable micro-narratives - 50 handmade books, Bookartbookshop, London.
The Flowers that Did in Eden Bloom, Pitzhanger Manor, London.
Chris Kenny, England & Co, London.
Chris Kenny: Recent Work, England & Co, London.
Chris Kenny: The Matter of Facts, England & Co, London.
Chris Kenny: part of me is floating above myself, England & Co, London.
Chris Kenny: Works from 2001, England & Co, London.
Artists Book Fair, Barbican, London.
Brighton Arts Centre, Brighton Marina.
Long and Ryle, Pimlico, London.
Birch and Conran, Soho, London.
Gallery 24, Notting Hill, London.
Artificial Realities, Courtauld Institute, London.
alpha beta carta, Parc culturel de Rentilly, Bussy-St Martin, France.
Telling Stories, Kaleidoscope Gallery, Sevenoaks.
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London.
Mappa Mundi 2, Hotel des Arts, Toulon, France.
First Cut, Manchester City Art Gallery and touring.
Wandering Lines: Automatic Drawing to Abstraction, England & Co, London.
Mappa Mundi, The Berardo Museum Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal.
The Art of Hip-ok-risy, The Mayor's & City of London Court, Guildhall Buildings, London.
Collected Fragments, Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens, Tyne & Wear, UK.
Zoo Art Fair, London (England & Co).
Slash: Paper Under the Knife, Museum of Art & Design, New York, USA.
City X, and The Map is not the Territory Revisited, both at England & Co, London.
House of Words, Dr Johnson's House, London.
Cut It Out: Contemporary Paper Cut Artists, Otter Gallery, Chichester; and Southampton City Art Gallery.
Contained Thoughts, The Courtauld Institute Library Exhibition Space, London.
Form Art and Design Fair (England & Co), Olympia, London.
London Art Fair (England & Co), BDC, London.
Re:formed, Chris Kenny, Georgia Russell, Jason Wallis-Johnson, England & Co, London.
Culture Bound: Courtauld Institute of Art's East Wing Collection VII, biennial exhibition displayed in the Institute's East Wing, Somerset House, London.
Chris Kenny, Georgia Russell, Jason Wallis-Johnson, Project Space (curated by Jane England), London Contemporary Art Fair, BDC, London.
Literary Constructs: Chris Kenny, Liliane Lijn, Arthur Giardelli, Vito Drago, Rupert Spira, Georgia Russell, England & Co, London.
Tracing Spaces, 66 East Centre for Urban Culture in Amsterdam.
ART 2004, London Contemporary Art Fair (England & Co).
The Map Is Not the Territory iii, James Hockey Gallery, Surrey Institute of Art & Design.
ART 2003, London Contemporary Art Fair (England & Co).
Summer in the City, England & Co, London.
Christmas Show, England & Co, London.
ART 2002, London Contemporary Art Fair (England & Co).
The Map Is Not the Territory, England & Co, London.
ART 2001, London Contemporary Art fair (England & Co).
Wallpaper, Old Kent Road, London.
ART 2000, London Contemporary Art Fair (England & Co).
Pagemakers, Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries and touring.
Virgin VIP lounge, Heathrow Airport.
Ealing Open, Pitshanger Manor Gallery, London.
Pull up a Chair, Scunthorpe Museum, Lincs.
Wexford Artists Book Festival, Wexford, Ireland.
Reading Rooms, Catalyst Arts, Belfast.
The Box Show, England & Co, at the Henley Festival.
British Surrealism 1935-1995, England & Co, London.
Artists Book Fair, Festival Hall, London.
Painted Leaves, Artists Books, Liberty, London.
Old Object, New Subject, Nottingham University.
Bookworks, Gallery II, Bradford University.
Words and Pictures, launched at ICA, London.
The Collage Show, England & Co, London.
Four Seasons Tree Cycle, inauguration of window installation, Music Sales Ltd, London.
ART 93, London Contemporary Art Fair (England & Co).
Art in Boxes, England & Co.
Pacesetters 12, Peterborough Museum and touring.
Six British Painters, touring exhibition in Spain.
ART 90, London Contemporary Art Fair.
Works for West Street Hotel, London.
Collage for window, The Cross, London.
Installations for window, The Cross, London.
Collages for window, The Cross, London.
Judy the Obscure, artist's book (for John Jesse).
Mosaic for the NEC, Birmingham.
Four Seasons Tree Cycle for Music Sales Ltd, London.
Little Journeys into the Heavenly Country, artist's book.
Record cover for The Fall.
The Secrets of the Deep.
The Principles of Abstract Composition.
The Principles of Flower Arranging.
You are part of a divine pudding.
The Pocket Book of Phallic Symbols.
Victoria and Albert Museum (artists' books collection).
Chris Kenny in his studio, 2009.

References: ART 2004

ART 2003

ART 2002

ART 2001

ART 2000

ART 93

ART 90