Suds McKenna

A large framed artwork hangs from the ceiling of a room, with windows surrounding. The artwork is abstract and colourful.

A pattern of a shirt and trousers is laid flat on a wall, decorated with art including the words 'lust' and 'envy' . On the white wall around the piece are drawings in pink.

A framed artwork is displayed on a wall, it features two people kissing. In the foreground is a pipe which has black plastic butterflys attached to it.

A small framed artwork is displayed between two windows on a painted brick wall.

A coloured pencil drawing depicting a woman with curly hair and a green dress. In her hand she holds a wine glass which is spilling red liquid. Over her left shoulder a swan with teeth bites a lock of her hair.

A cast aluminium lamb is posed leaping. The lamb has shiny markings across its body and a rough salty surface. There is a small pink gash in the side of the lamb. The lamb sits in front of a white painted wood background

suspended on a curved wire frame hung from ceiling knitted cardigans with extra long arms, in a room with wooden flooring, fireplace, wooden sash windows and dark green walls

A black ink drawing of a crowd of people on a white, torn-out sketchbook page. Most of the figures are pictured from the neck or shoulders up and have cartoonish, exaggerated features. They are rendered in scratchy pen lines with cross-hatched shading or no shading at all. The figures are densely packed together with some emerging out of an indistinct shadowy backdrop

The images shown above represent the Glasgow International 2024 project that Suds McKenna is participating in, as well as the artist’s individual practice.

Suds McKenna is an Irish artist working across drawing, painting, print and sculpture. His work depicts both individual and social bodies in addressing ideas of commonality, performativity and Queer world-building. Through the citation of popular cultural forms, he explores referentiality as an act of outreach and connectedness, while understanding the performative as a gesture of boundlessness, Queer autonomy, reclamation and recovery. With a primary focus on the figure, these works often call upon industrialised image-making traditions such as that of cartoon and illustrative media, as means of evoking shared memory and experience. McKenna graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in 2016. Exhibited work includes SAM’S EDEN at CCA Derry, A familiar plough into the knot of a tie at CCA Intermedia Gallery Glasgow, A many-voiced argument with life at Market Gallery Glasgow and Platform: 2019 at Edinburgh Art Festival. His illustrations have also featured in SAM'S EDEN #2, Letters to Assynt #2, Communal Leisure #4 and various issues of Elephant Magazine.

Projects

Programme

Suds McKenna

Where a castle meets the sky

The Pipe Factory