Not currently on display at the V&A

100 Drawings

Drawing
2001 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Chris Kenny must be one of the few visual artists to have his work 'performed' on the radio – a reading by the poet Simon Armitage of one of his found text pieces. Already known for his poetry and artist's books, in the 1990s Kenny began to make boxed works using meticulously arranged scraps of text excavated from old books, fragments of old maps, or natural objects such as leaves and twigs.

Kenny harvests the raw material for his witty twig pieces, which he always calls 'drawings', from one particular bush on Hampstead Heath near Kenwood House. He then 'edits' them by trimming to length, and painstakingly glues each 'drawing' together before arranging them supported on stainless steel pins so that they 'float' in front of the backboard. As he explains, 'There is a resonance in found materials – materials that have a past life – whether they are text in a book, a previous narrative, or part of a living thing such as a plant or a tree. This inherited meaning sits alongside any new meaning brought about by a new context'.


Object details

Category
Object type
Title100 Drawings (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Mixed media construction with twigs
Brief description
100 Drawings. 2001. Mixed media construction with twigs, by Chris Kenny
Physical description
Box frame containing one hundred constructions made from found twigs, set out in ten rows of ten.
Dimensions
  • Height: 85cm
  • Width: 85cm
  • Depth: 8.3cm
Production typeUnique
Subject depicted
Summary
Chris Kenny must be one of the few visual artists to have his work 'performed' on the radio – a reading by the poet Simon Armitage of one of his found text pieces. Already known for his poetry and artist's books, in the 1990s Kenny began to make boxed works using meticulously arranged scraps of text excavated from old books, fragments of old maps, or natural objects such as leaves and twigs.

Kenny harvests the raw material for his witty twig pieces, which he always calls 'drawings', from one particular bush on Hampstead Heath near Kenwood House. He then 'edits' them by trimming to length, and painstakingly glues each 'drawing' together before arranging them supported on stainless steel pins so that they 'float' in front of the backboard. As he explains, 'There is a resonance in found materials – materials that have a past life – whether they are text in a book, a previous narrative, or part of a living thing such as a plant or a tree. This inherited meaning sits alongside any new meaning brought about by a new context'.
Collection
Accession number
E.1091-2002

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Record createdDecember 3, 2003
Record URL
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