My artworks include kinetic, sonic and robotic sculptures, videos and diagrams. I employ DIY, allegorical and autodidactic methods and modes of representation to engender visceral, vitalist, uncanny and humorous encounters and to explore political and philosophical material. I am the recipient of the 2020 Mark Tanner Sculpture Award and have had solo exhibitions at Standpoint, Matt's Gallery, Beaconsfield and Piper Keys. I have also exhibited in many group shows in the UK and internationally including at the ICA, Greene Naftali and BAK. In 2023 I co-organised Poor Things, a show of sculpture through the lense of class, at Fruitmarket. I often work collaboratively and am currently a member of the Diagram Research Group and the Capital Drawing Group. My work is in the Arts Council Collection, and I am represented by Division of Labour. I have published articles in journals such as Third Text, The Journal of Visual Art Practice, Art Monthly and Mute, including on the theory and practice of diagramming and on the politics of art and art education. Drawing Analogies: Diagrams in Art, Theory and Practice by DRG will be published by Bloosbury in 2025. I am a Researcher at Kingston School of Art where I supervise practice based PhDs and I also teach Fine Art at Central St Martins.
GALLERY:
Represented by Division of Labour
AWARDS:
Mark Tanner Sculpture Award Winner 2020-21
Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice Grant (2019-20)
COLLECTIONS:
Arts Council Collection
Grundy Art Gallery
ESSAYS:
'Dean Kenning - Little Creatures' by Martha Barratt (2021)
'Luxury Complex: New Faces in Hell' by Adelle Stripe. In Excavate! The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall, Faber & Faber (2021)'Dean Kenning's Kinetics' by John Roberts (2019)
'The Weapons of Our Adversaries. George Bataille's Analysis of Fascism and Community' by Harry Weeks. Third Text Vol.33:3 (2019)'The Creeping Terror of Insecure Dwelling (From Dunwich to Chavganistan)' by John Cussans (2007)
TALKING ABOUT MY WORK etc.:
'Class action: the show pricking the bubble of art snobbery', Philippa Kelly, The Guardian, 2 March 2023
Introductory video to Poor Things for Fruitmarket with Emma Hart
'Creaturely Connections. A Conversation with Dean Kenning' by Jillian Knipe, Sculpture Magazine, May/June 2022
Vitalist Aesthetics. Dean Kenning in Conversation with Lindsay Seers. ICA, London, 30 October 2021
Talking Coetzee, allegory and kinetics. Art Fictions Podcast with Jillian Knipe, May 2021
Conversation with Emma Cousin. Chats in Lockdown, March 2021
Conversation with Simom Tyszko. Isotopica about my exhibition The Origin of Life at Beaconsfield Gallery
'Dean Kenning's Stuck Machines: The Artist in Conversation with Emma Hart'. Beaconsfield, April 2019 (audio at bottom of webpage)
REVIEWS ETC:
Evolutionary Love at Cross Lane Projects. Review by Anthony Ellis
Evolutionary Love at Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre. Review by Maja Lorkowska, Feb 2022
Sight & Sound: 'Atrocity Exhibition', a review of the Sick Monday DVD by Lindsay Hallam, February 2020
Garageland Reviews: Psychobotanical, Abigail Ashford, Jun 2019
thisistomorrow: Dean Kenning: Psychobotanical, Lucy Holt, June 2019
Art Monthly: Unnanounced Acts of Publicness, Larne Abse Goggarty, July-Aug 2015
'Kenning’s work with a group of five students ... was entitled Building the Fetish, Described as a ‘Value Map of the Kings Cross Development’, Building the Fetish estimated the annual revenue or cost of sites including student housing (£11m), the retail units soon to appear in the former Western and Eastern Coal Drops (combined: £150m) the nature park (£0) and the luxury homes set to occupy the gas holders (£80m). Materially the project visualised these values in the form of a map and piles of earth that looked like shit - a form of base materialism close to the aesthetics of George Bataille ...'Harry Weeks (University of Edinburgh) reappraises the idea of the 'social turn' in art through the writing of Georges Bataille, and the art practices of Thomas Hirschhorn, Goldin+Senneby and Dean Kenning
Spike Art Magazine: A write up of my work by Antoine Catala in 'Artist's Favourites'
Artist, writer and art teacher, Dean Kenning is the type of artist who resists commercialization but keeps on churning out amazing works. He fights against British university reforms that will bring the cost of art tuition in the UK to absurd US levels, and is actively looking for alternatives (a complete rethinking of the educational system, for one) where others are not. Once Kenning told me that he works with murals and kinetic sculptures because they are potentially the worst possible art forms. His hilarious and at times abject sculptures have directly influenced my work. His kinetic, rubber, plantlike sculptures are instant classics (plus they can be integrated into any art show or domestic setting). In Value: A Visualisation (2012), a skinlike-covered ball trapped in a wooden box speaks – with a computer-generated voice – about the market. The focal point of Kenning’s reflections is the use of art and the role of the artist in society – of course I dig it. *1972 in Hounslow, UK, lives in London.Guardian: The Dulwich Horror, Jessica Lack, 11 Aug 2007
The Dulwich Horror is Dean Kenning's witty response to the housing crisis. Inspired by the cosmic horror of cult writer HP Lovecraft, Kenning has taking the novelist's most weird invention, the Cthulhu Mythos - a collection of supernatural monstrous entities - and has tried to realise these creatures by painting them on agents' letting boards. The results can be seen across London. Green ogres with mangled hands and slimy tentacles watch passers-by from their lofty perches, postmodern gorgons clutch at bricks and mortar. Lovecraft's preoccupation with human powerlessness is revealed in this series of faceless fiends.Art Monthly: Dean Kenning: the Dulwich Horror, Eliza Williams, Sept 2007
