Noel McKenna

Noel McKenna was born in Brisbane in 1956 and has lived in Sydney for the past 35 years. His practice traverses drawing, prints, sculpture, painting, and both functional and non-functional ceramic ware.

He is known for works that examine suburban culture in its many guises. He is interested in the everyday, the unobserved, the underappreciated and the neglected. Hinting at narratives beyond the image, his spare linear iconography explores displacement, interconnected encounters, behaviours and relationships with pathos and humility.

Noel McKenna has held regular solo exhibitions since the 1980s and has been the subject of significant museum exhibitions including John Brack x Noel McKenna: A Face in the Mirror at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 2026, Landscape Mapped, QAGOMA, 2017, Close to Home: Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial 2016, Art Gallery of NSW, and South of no North – Aberhart, Eggleston, McKenna at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2013.

His work is held in many public, private and corporate collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland University of Technology, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand.