McKenna’s practice ranges from public commissions to site-specific engagement often involving other art forms and practitioners such as writers, actors, musicians, film makers and architects. As a community activist she focuses on inter-human relations within sites of cultural diversity exploring memory and identity in tracing the many aspects of everyday life that both unite and make us different.
In her most recent project My Daily Bread – Preserving the Sacred McKenna travelled to the village of Fasayal in Palestine during 2017 as part of an Art and Activism Symposium in the Jordan Valley. Whilst there she worked with Palestinian Bedouin women learning bread-making and traditional food. Whilst celebrating the different process of bread-making across different world cultures the project further acknowledged issues around land-rights and the injustices suffered by those denied access to traditional lands for agriculture and ways of life. The project was further developed at LSC in collaboration with the Leitrim Intercultural Forum with participants including refugees and asylum seekers from Syria, Kurdistan, Zimbabwe and Serbia.
Jackie McKenna
McKenna has produced several large outdoor public works throughout Ireland and abroad as well as gallery exhibitions. She was involved in organizing sculpture symposia, sculpture trails and parks and is a co-founder of the Leitrim Sculpture Centre in Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim. McKenna has worked with communities in Prisons, Carers Groups, Tidy Towns organisations, Local Art Centres and Schools and has taught on Youth Reach programmes in Dublin, CE Schemes, in secondary schools and third level art colleges. McKenna currently teaches professional development workshops to artists at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre.
More recently fostering active community involvement McKenna’s practice draws on the dynamic relationship between the artist, the group and the artwork through a range of collaborative processes inspired by the traditions of artisan disciplines such as metal workers, stone masons, glass makers and ceramics.
BREAD is part of Art and Agriculture III a series of projects held every year at LSC exploring connections between art, the environment, land-use, farming, food and rural life both locally and around the world..
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