The current exhibition at the Mermaid Arts Centre gallery is a distillation of a body of work jointly produced by Northern Irish artist Michael Geddis and Bray-based Joanna Kidney. Having met at a residency in 2016, the two initiated what began as a visual conversation but over a period of five years became a more extensive collaborative undertaking.

A former veterinary surgeon, Geddis’ practice is rooted in intricate drawing, inspired by microscopic forms, structures and patterns. Using specialist magnifying lenses, he achieves minute detail in his ‘cellular landscapes’ [1] which, despite initial impressions and often technical titles, are not literal but drawn from memory and imagination. Many are rendered in greyscale tones, some (including prints and works on glass) incorporating a colour element. 

Where Geddis’ compositions fill their supports, areas of soft and hard-edge rendering lending depth and modulation, Kidney’s works have a more fragmented quality. Many of her drawings, including as paintings and installations, position discrete, often partial forms in dialogue with each other, their material make-up and their surroundings. Together with examples that appear as intuitive visualisations of underlying networks, they are suggestive of an interest in mapping and interrelations.

The points of overlap and difference between these two artists underpinned their shared project with common ground and the challenge of dialectical tensions. Their commitment to working through these, as they were influenced by and assimilated each other’s interests and visual language, has shaped their combined output.

Between 2016 and 2021, drawings passed back and forth between their hands, through the post and by other means. Without engaging in verbal exchanges, at least in the early years, each added to, subtracted from or modified work done by the other, negotiating an increasing level of risk as their creations evolved towards their final forms. [2]

Although the exhibited works arose from these incremental changes, it seems clear from the first encounter in the show – with thirty-six unframed graphite drawings arrayed across three rows of shelves – that analysing them to identify who was responsible for what would be inappropriate. As the hybrid title 'mergeemerge' suggests, the responsive, time-based process involved in their making has yielded highly integrated works. Familiarity with the artists adds interest, and with little effort, clues could be found as to their contributions, but this would distract from what has been achieved, and give way to an all-too-pervasive differentiating vision. 

Numbered rather than titled, the drawings are quietly seductive with much to encourage slow looking. Although they share the common feature of being anchored by a principal complex form, in many cases branching out to connect with less-developed secondary elements, the variations in positioning, scale, types of paper (some plain, some with an acrylic wash)  lend a great degree of diversity. 

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The featured motifs, which are also richly inventive, are an intriguing mix of the naturalistic and abstract. They prompt associations that leap across scales from the minutiae of cell and leaf structures, to the brain, vascular and neural systems, and urban and stellar conglomerations. Yet, the works are not specifically about any of these things.