Artwork
100 Drawings
100 Drawings is a drawing by Chris Kenny. It dates from 2001 and is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
About this work
Overview
Unlike traditional drawings, these works consist of twigs, leaf fragments, and pieces of old maps, meticulously arranged and mounted on stainless steel pins.
Chris Kenny’s 100 Drawings is a collection of small, hand-assembled compositions made from natural and textual fragments. Unlike traditional drawings, these works consist of twigs, leaf fragments, and pieces of old maps, meticulously arranged and mounted on stainless steel pins. The pieces are suspended slightly from their backboards, creating a sense of weightless presence. Kenny has produced these works since the 1990s, extending his earlier practice with artist’s books and found text into three-dimensional form.
Subject & Meaning
The works draw meaning from their origins: discarded text from old books, weathered map fragments, and organic matter gathered from a specific bush on Hampstead Heath. Each element carries a prior history—whether from a printed page or a living branch—recontextualized into new, silent narratives. Kenny treats these materials as residues of lived experience, where the past lingers alongside the present arrangement. The result is a quiet meditation on memory, decay, and the persistence of meaning in overlooked things.
Technique & Style
Kenny’s process is deliberate and tactile: he collects, trims, and glues each fragment by hand, treating them like linguistic units in a poem. The twigs and paper scraps are arranged with precision, then mounted on fine steel pins to appear as if floating. This method transforms humble materials into delicate, structured compositions that hover between drawing, sculpture, and collage. The aesthetic is restrained, favoring asymmetry and subtle texture over ornamentation, emphasizing the inherent character of the found materials.
History & Provenance
Kenny began this body of work in the 1990s, following his earlier investigations into artist’s books and textual assemblages. The materials are sourced exclusively from a single bush on Hampstead Heath near Kenwood House, grounding the series in a specific, recurring location. The act of gathering and arranging these fragments has become a ritualistic practice, with each piece evolving from repeated, intimate encounters with the same environment over time.
Context
Kenny’s work emerges from a broader post-conceptual tradition that values material history and poetic restraint. His approach aligns with artists who treat found objects as carriers of latent narrative, while his use of language fragments connects to concrete poetry and textual art. The radio performance of one of his pieces by poet Simon Armitage underscores the literary dimension of his practice, bridging visual and verbal forms in an unusual but resonant way.
Legacy
Kenny’s 100 Drawings have contributed to a quiet but persistent redefinition of drawing as an expanded field—where line, form, and meaning arise not from mark-making on paper, but from the arrangement of discarded matter. His work invites viewers to consider the poetic potential of the mundane and the emotional weight carried by fragments of the everyday. Though not widely publicized, his practice continues to influence artists interested in material memory and slow, contemplative making.
Artist & collection
Artist
Chris Kenny made drawings that feel like tiny worlds squeezed into neat stacks. In *100 Drawings* from 2001 he turned everyday scraps—torn paper, bits of string, coffee stains—into tiny landscapes or faces, all taped…
