Anna Kenneally’s (b.1995) work explores the contradictions between the organic and the artificial in our social worlds, our built environments, and our inner lives. Beginning with a central female subject, Kenneally collages sketches, photos, and art-historical references into the surrounding environment until an uneasy narrative emerges: Of a young woman disconnected from her surroundings; of a hardened soul gazing defiantly back at her audience; of an individual captured in the midst of revery. The work’s elusive, slippery grounds are made up of layers that are worked, effaced, and reworked until they reside somewhere between abstraction and representation, never quite giving viewer’s enough information to place the figures on a physical plane while still evoking the moods, memories, and connotations associated with physical objects. The central characters become enmeshed in a veil of angst, uncertainty, and epiphany that is at once imagined and all-consuming.

With big swaths of paint and bold brushstrokes that teeter between warm and cool sources of light, Kenneally's paintings evoke the Impressionist formal relationship between the artist’s hand and her environment. Casting known contemporary figures in a Neo-Gothic style, Kenneally’s austere paintings allow the viewer to consider the contradictions that persist in the present day: between indulgence and melancholy, introspection and expectation, vulnerability and restraint. Kenneally’s work invites us into realms where the real and the fantastical collide—where the demands of composition, the gravity of storytelling, and the alluring influence of accident come together to render familiar faces anew.

Kenneally received her Foundation Diploma in Art & Design at Kingston University in Kingston, UK (2014), and later received her BA in Fine Art at Bath Spa University in Bath, UK (2017). She has had solo exhibitions at 81 Leonard Gallery, New York, NY. (2024); and Fredericks & Freiser, New York, NY (2023 & 2022). She has recently been included in shows internationally at NARANJO 141, Mexico City, MX (2024); Academy Mansion, New York, NY (2023); Gallery LVS, Seoul, KR (2023); Ojiri Gallery, London, UK (2022); Victoria Miro Gallery, London, UK (2022); Stems Gallery, Paris, FR (2022); Cob Gallery, London, UK (2021); and Fulham Town Hall, London, UK (2021). Kenneally currently lives and works in London, UK.

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