Bio:

Chester Tenneson was born in Liverpool, England, in 1980. He studied at Manchester School of Art between 1998 - 2004, gaining an MA in Fine Art in 2004. He currently lives and works in Manchester, England and is based at Rogue Artists’ Studios. Chester is also a Lecturer and researcher in Fine Art, focusing upon trans masculine and Queer perspectives in contemporary art and pedagogy.

Chester’s work explores the absurdity within the norms of everyday institutional design and authority, examining the idiosyncratic nature of commonplace objects and language. His position as a transgender man informs his practice, looking to the absurdity within the design of the cis-heteronormative world. He takes prompts from institutional statements, signage, social media, advertising and product design to create interventional text-based works, sculptures and performances. His works seek to act as prompts for performance, playing with transitional moments of movement - calling for the viewer to engage with points of tension/mischief. The codes and rules of the digital world are often played back into the physical, with references to the banal performativity of social media advertising.

CURRENT AWARD:

PIVOT, Bluecoat & Castlefield Gallery

CURRENT / RECENT EXHIBITIONS:

2023

(Un)Defining Queer, The Whitworth, Manchester

2022

Queer Art(ists) Now 2022, Space Station Sixty-Five, London

Archives at Play, Castlefield Gallery

Fayre Share Fayre, The Whitworth

ARTICLES / INTERVIEWS:

This is tomorrow, Text by Sean Burns

Bluecoat Transgender Awareness Week 2021, Artist in Focus Interview

PERFORMANCE LECTURE:

Labels & Fables; A Trans History of Artwork by Chester Tenneson (2020)

Commissioned by Trans Creative, released as part of Trans Vegas Festival 2020. This short video is a retrospective of artworks made, reflecting through a trans lens.