mergemerge: A Collaborative Drawing Project by Michael Geddis and Joanna Kidney: Ballinglen Gallery

2 - 30 July 2021

This project began as purely visual conversation by way of a series of small drawings posted back and forth between two artists. What emerged from this silent contemplation is a grand expression of the convergences and divergences in the work of Michael Geddis and Joanna Kidney.


Following meeting during a Residency in Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Co. Mayo, their collaboration began in 2016 in response to the shared similarities of their work. As it has evolved over 5 years, the tensions that arise from the differences in their approaches to drawing have come to energize their work. Taking cues from patterns and forms of science and the natural world, they passed drawings back and forward, both of them adding a part drawing to each one sequentially. Their joint drawings grew organically until each one reached its conclusion. What has emerged from their combined memory, intuition and imagination are intertwined otherworlds...worlds which speak of looking closely, minutiae and connections.