ZACK MENNELL




(PARA)SITE: A SEA CHANGE (2026) 


a performance to camera made with Leon Clowes, Baiba Sprance & Marco Berardi

Drawing on folklore, archaeology, and contemporary mythmaking, zack mennell imagines a series of mutant, cryptid beings emerging from the sites where human structures have been overtaken by natural processes. In these overlapping layers of prehistoric ritual, imperial ambition, industrial collapse and ecological crisis, zack’s strange beings corrode temporal boundaries.

Ancient belief systems infect new ruins; mystical residues leak into the infrastructure of late capitalism; industrial sites are revealed as the vacated flesh of Empire; and the Estuary's pylons, quarries and riverbed are haunted by cruising creatures, corrupted gods and half-remembered rituals - signals from past and future worlds, flickering within the present.

This work premiered during the COMMON HOST weekend. Produced by Future Ritual.



COMMON HOST gathering the parasitic (un)natural is rooted in the landscapes of the Thames Estuary, especially Thurrock, a terrain marked by centuries of human intervention, industry, trade and decline. Retail parks and housing estates are built over historic sites; chalklands are cut through with ancient deneholes; quarries gape like hungry maws; rubbish rises from landfill burial grounds; animals and plants reclaim former sites of industry as collapsing structures become their unlikely new homes.

COMMON HOST is the final element of a wider project by zack, deepening their exploration of difficult ecological and personal legacies through performance, film and workshop activities. These works explore the resonances between zack’s experiences of madness and institution and the wider climate of political hostility to disabled, neurodivergent, queer and working-class communities.

Participating Artists
The programme features Julia Bardsley, Selena Chandler, Leon Clowes, Nathalie Coste, Ewan Hindes, Ella Johnston, Fenia Kotsopoulou, Ash McNaughton, Andrea Mindel, Jo Morrison, Martin O’Brien, Pianka Pärna, Baiba Sprance and Marco Berardi, Manuel Vason and Chanel Vegas.  


Press
> The Guardian: ‘The smell wasn’t healthy’: the artist who wore 24 nappies to highlight sewage pollution – and fell ill
> Run Riot: ‘COMMON HOST’ convenes ecology, folklore and lived experience through film and performance art
> A Young(ish) Perspective: In conversation with zack mennell
> QX Magazine: Artist zack mennell Explores the Queerness of Their Practice