Tracy Mackenna

Tracy had been living in Budapest, Hungary from the mid 1980s to the early 1990s. In that period she was walking, driving and conversing – activating methods to explore and understand her Socialist-governed environment and the place of art in it. Embedded in Hungary’s contemporary art world, from there she explored the former ‘East block’ counties, and devised and realised a number of pan-European projects to enable artists from Hungary, Romania, former Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union to be in residence and show their work in the UK.

Leading up to her solo exhibition at CCA, Glasgow (1993; curated by Andrew Nairne) through writing (poetic, factual, documentary) and drawing (observational, subjective, automatic) and sculptural practice (installation, sculpture, film) she devised a series of artistic ‘counter-mapping’ approaches to present, communicate and think through place, people and time.  

A natural collaborator, Tracy worked with Forbo Flooring Systems to test the newest water-based cutting technology, to produce the large-scale linoleum floor that contained a spatial ‘essay’. The glass works were produced in collaboraiton with Glasgow’s East End family firm Hurry Bros, extending their sandblasting techniques and facilities to produce their largest scale pieces.

To accompany the exhibition, CCA produced the publication

Tracy Mackenna, Centre for Contemporary Arts, ISBN 1 873331 09 3, 1993.