zack mennell (b. 1994, Hornchurch UK) is a self-taught emerging artist using writing, photography and performance to explore queerness and neurodiversity in relation to presence and visibility. zack frequently collaborates with performance artist Martin O’Brien performing throughout the UK and in Europe. zack has intermittently worked in documenting performance and live events through photography for several years. Their photographic practice is strictly analogue.
“Artistic expression is, for me, a way to make sense of the world and an attempt to contextualise who I am within it. In stepping into difficulty and pain through artmaking, I attempt to understand life through a different register to that of daily survival. I want my work to have an uncanny quality, that it might temporarily unsettle familiar places, making visible some of the strange aspects and tensions embedded there.”
zack is a studio holder at Triangle LGBTQ+ Cultural Centre, and a member of the Metal New Artist Network and the Working Class Creatives Database. They are a member of the TOMA (The Other MA) 2024/25 cohort, an alternative MFA based in Southend-on-Sea.
Education
The Other MA (TOMA), The Old Waterworks, Southend-on-Sea (2024-2025).
The Sunday Skool for Misfits, Experimenters and Dissenters, VSSL Studio (2021).
Higher Certificate, Liberal Arts (English Major), King’s College London (2014-2021).
Advanced Level Apprenticeship in Community Arts Management, South Essex College, Southend (2012-2014).
Duckie’s Summer Splash at Happy Valley Pride, Hebden Bridge (Yorkshire) - July 2025.
Fading Out of Dead Air (Transmissions for the Necropolis); Martin O’Brien at A Collective Archive, Ugly Duck (London) - June 2025.
Rage Reactor; DadaFest International 40, The Bluecoat (Liverpool) - March 2025.
Blood, Tears, Piss, and Spunk; Rat Park by Duckie, Vauxhall (London) - February 2025.
spit it out; Martin O’Brien’s DISCHARGE by Future Ritual, Ugly Duck (London) - March 2024.
An Ambulance to the Future (The Second Chance); Martin O’Brien, Whitechapel Gallery (London); Live Art Denmark, Warehouse 9, Toaster (Copenhagen) - May 2023 to March 2024.
Fading Out of Dead Air (Transmissions for the Necropolis); Martin O’Brien, Whitechapel Gallery (London) - December 2023.
Hjemom; Collective Performance led by VestAndPage, Hamar Performance Festival, Kunstbanken (Hamar, Norway) - October 2023.
(para)site: perturbing the convalescent; Excappare by Cerebellum Arts, Coastal Currents Festival (Hastings, Sussex) - October 2023.
Overture For The End (An Ashen Place); Martin O’Brien, Whitechapel Gallery (London) - July 2023.
(para)site: a blockage; Pipe Dreams, Chisenhale Studios & Goldsmiths University, (Bethnal Green, London) - April 2023.
(para)site: a discharge of cultural sewage; VSSL studio, Totally Thames Festival & Deptford X Festival (Deptford, London) - September 2022.
(para)site: taking the piss; Runt of The Litter (Hackney), hArtslane (New Cross), Live Art Club, QWE’RE (Deptford) - May to August 2022.
The Last Breath Society: Coughing Coffin; Martin O’Brien, Wellcome Trust, Birkbeck University, Institute of Contemporary Art (Westminster, London) - August 2021.
Rage Reactor; DadaFest International 40, The Bluecoat (Liverpool) - March 2025.
Whistling As The Night Calls; with Martin O’Brien, VSSL studio and Future Ritual (Deptford, London) - October - December 2024.
Portals and Constellations; Venice International Performance Art Week with VestAndPage, Future Ritual, and Performance Art Video at Palazzo Mora (Venice, Italy) December 2024.
(para)site: a discharge of cultural sewage; VSSL studio, Totally Thames Festival & Deptford X Festival (Deptford, London) - September 2022.
Future Ritual Festival, Institute of Contemporary Art (London) - May 2022.
Mythic Time by VestAndPage and Joseph Morgan Schofield; Future Ritual, ]performance s p a c e[ (Folkestone) - September 2021.
these teeming forms by Joseph Morgan Schofield; ]performance s p a c e[ (Folkestone), Institute of Contemporary Art, VSSL studio, Chisenhale Studios (London) - July-September 2021.
Gathering in a Time of Plague, VSSL studio (London) - April to August 2021.
between crisis and stasis I wait by Joseph Morgan Schofield; TactileBOSCH (Cardiff) - November 2019.
there are scratchy woollen jumpers under my skin — in Birdsong from Inobservable Worlds; Dolly Sen in partnership with Unlimited & The Wellcome Trust (June 2024).
sal(i)vation — in FDBN...MOURNING; Sticky Fingers Publishing (June 2023)
Art as Doing — in Performing Recovery Magazine (June 2023)
PSX: a decade of performance art in the UK; ]performance s p a c e[ (2021).
nightsweats, poetry and illustration after thom gunn; Guillaume Vandame & SET (2020).