Now residing in Cork, Londoner Kenny Morris was at the epicentre of the creative maelstrom that was punk in the mid-1970s. In 1976, he was the drummer in Sid Vicious’s The Flowers of Romance, and he rose to fame as the drummer for Siouxsie and the Banshees from 1977 to 1979, imbuing their sound with his unprecedented technique. An attendee for one year at London’s Camberwell School of Art in 1976, Morris left to join Siouxsie for three whirlwind years before returning to his fine art cravings while also studying film. He worked with the video/filmmaker John Maybury (Pet Shop Boys West End Girls and Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares To You videos and Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, The Jacket, The Edge of Love) before his own short film, La Main Morte, premiered at the International Berlin Film Festival in 1986 and was screened at many other European festivals.
Since moving to Cork in 2010, Kenny has held several exhibitions there and in Waterford, including five of his short films and improvised musical performances with his group, The Modern Raze. The current show is his first in Dublin.
A Banshee Left Wailing, the title of this exhibition, is also the title of Kenny’s forthcoming memoir, which is as much about art, music, and subculture as his life experiences from childhood to the present.
Kenny Morris, A Banshee Left Wailing is at Gallery X, 11 Hume Street, Dublin from March 1-
Image Credit – Silvio Severino
