Clare Kenny works with a variety of materials such as found objects and building materials, yet her work almost always originates in photography, sometimes simply the idea of the photograph. Manipulation of materials take a central position in her work and the questioning of their given role in presenting a factual record. The images are often a starting point for further abstraction often culminating in 3-dimensional objects or ‘Photographic Objects’ as she refers to them.
Reality and representation are explored, within images and in her use of materials, which imitate others such as marble or stone. Form and content reflect a concern with the nebulous divide between fact and fiction. Real and fabricated memories of the artist’s life are recorded and fed into the images and materials that comprise the work. Images are manipulated in stages, often abstracting or duplicating details and re-evaluating ideas of truth and authenticity. As Wall Street International expressed, “There is an arc in Kenny’s work that melds feminine and masculine sensibilities. In this way one could argue that Kenny de-genderises materials rendering their historical associations, indistinct and in a way non-traceable, messed up but intrinsically ‘present’.”