David Kenney is an artist whose practice spans sculpture, installation and writing, with a sustained interest in architecture, systems and how people encounter constructed environments. Alongside his studio practice, he has experience working within large organisations on complex, public-facing projects. These parallel strands inform one another, shaping a practice concerned with space, narrative and lived experience.

He paints, makes sculpture, and writes.

Working primarily with hard-edge acrylic painting, David explores shadow and light within architectural forms. His paintings are built through layered processes of adding and removing paint to achieve realistic surface textures.

His sculptural work explores similar themes, with recurring motifs drawn from basic architectural forms. Using cast and mould, David creates precise geometric objects in Jesmonite, often removing surface layers to produce a concrete-like texture.

Across both painting and sculpture, particular attention is paid to texture, shadow and light to evoke a feeling of past use and interaction. Surfaces worn by time and human intervention occupy seemingly timeless landscapes – liminal spaces devoid of human presence.

A constant theme of world-building runs through David’s practice. Since 2019, he has been developing an imagined architectural universe in which each painting or sculpture has a written counterpart – a chapter or scene contributing to a wider fictional narrative. This ongoing body of work, titled The Constant State, unfolds gradually through individual pieces, allowing the story to shift and expand over time.

Alongside this, David is developing PRTV (Peterlee Relational Test Vehicle) – a long-term, site-specific programme concerned with the observation, collection and organisation of material relating to Peterlee’s civic, architectural and technological development. The project examines how planned systems, infrastructure and everyday realities coexist, and how ambitions for the future are recorded, adapted and reinterpreted over time.

While distinct in approach, both The Constant State and PRTV function as evolving frameworks through which artworks, texts and artefacts are produced, tested and placed in relation to one another.

Selected Exhibitions

Redcar Contemporary Art Gallery, Redcar
Cupola Contemporary, Sheffield
Dead Dog Gallery, Durham (guest artist)
Ferens Art Gallery, Hull
The Peckham Pelican, London
50 MZ, Liverpool
Redcar Palace, Redcar
The Auxiliary (Middlesbrough Art Week), Middlesbrough
NomoreNowt, Community House, Peterlee

Curation & Production

Ron Lapworth: Full Circle – Peterlee

Awards & Fellowships

North East Emerging Artist Award – Seaton Delaval Hall
Northern Expressions Artist Development Programme – Scarborough Museums & Galleries

Publications

Times VII – Shelter / 87 Gallery / Artlink Hull

Art Fairs

Stockton Art Fair – Stockton Art Festival