Joanna Kidney
Metamurmuration
3 March to 10 April
The exhibition was opened by writer Sara Baume. Scroll down to read her speech and watch a video.
Joanna will present an Artists' Gallery Talk on Saturday 24 March at 12 noon, with a response to Metamurmuration by Uillinn Dance Artist in Residence Helga Deasy.

To watch a video of Joanna's Artist Talk in the gallery please see here.

'Two apparently opposed but actually linked ideas seem to underlie Kidney's work: the one and the many. That is how, on the one hand, we experience the world from the point of view of a distinct, individual consciousness, while on the other, each individual is actually a complex amalgam of myriad processes and systems – and a minute constituent of an immense, dynamic universe. Duality and opposites turn up throughout her work: movement and stillness, chance and design, particle and duration and stasis, repetition and change.'
Aidan Dunne, The Irish Times, 07.03.2017.

Metamurmuration is a monumental, site-responsive, spatial drawing composed of approximately 100,000 particles of suspended felt, trailing, pulsing and swarming through space. It awakens the audience's kinaesthesia, encouraging an exploration of time and space. Pattern unfolds through the repetition of the deconstructed particle, opening out into an infinity of simultaneous micro and macrocosms.

One hundred and eighty people participated in making this piece of work. The mundane, repetitive labour recalled assembly lines and mass production but also craft and tradition.

Joanna Kidney was born in Dublin and currently lives in Co. Wicklow, Ireland. Encompassing drawing, painting and installation, her work explores ideas of temporality and the interrelationship between all living matter. Seeking to make some sense of life, it reflects on how complex yet tiny our lives are and how vast and infinite the universe is. Recent solo exhibitions include Galway ArtsCentre (2017), Mermaid Arts Centre, Co. Wicklow (2015), Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2013) and The Drawing Project, Co. Dublin (2012). She has exhibited widely in group shows in Ireland, France, Germany and the USA. She is the recipient of an Arts Council Travel and Training Award, numerous Wicklow County Council Awards, an RHA Studio Award, a Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship and a DIT Award of Excellence. Residencies include: Brigham Young University, Utah; Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Co. Mayo; The Guesthouse, Cork with the Tellurometer Project Collective. She is a founding member of Outpost Studios, Co. Wicklow. Her work is included in the collections of AIB, The Central Bank, OPW, UCD and Dept of Environment, Northern Ireland.

www.joannakidney.com
 

 

A Short Speech for Joanna and David

 

Whenever I am entrusted with tasks like this –

I do a bit of groundwork on the artists –

And always seem to find that they are artists of the kind who have a polite antipathy to words –

Which is at once intriguing and unnerving.

Lo! On David’s website, a quote from the poet Paul Valéry:

Anything we can define distinguishes itself instantly from the productive spirit and is opposed.

The safest way to proceed – I have found –

Is to advance upon the work as openly and curiously as possible –

To make a point of contact – to tell a story about my point of contact.

 

One gloomy evening last week, I drove into Skibbereen to meet Joanna and the installation in a partially-composed state –

And we talked about journeys –

The journey of tens of thousands of starlings – from Scandinavia and Russia, to converge upon Timoleague –

The journey of each sovereign starling within the murmuration – bespeckling the Timoleague skies in perfect synchronicity –

The journey of the installation – each felt bird which makes up each separate string – and every set of fingers – of strangers and friends, from Bray to Utah – and all the conversations which arose as fingers rolled felt – connections, confessions made –

And finally, the journey the artist wants you to take with the installation through this space – stairwell, balcony, tunnel, crescendo – paying attention to the places where it ebbs and flows, rises and falls, straggles and accumulates – converges.

 

On my journey home in the van that evening, it started to snow –

The hills and gorse and sea beyond my windscreen obscured by tiny, shapeless, listless marks –

Which somehow managed to add up to a great stillness –

Cementing my point of contact with Metamurmuration.

 

And then I was snowed in – for four days – sitting at my freezing desk – growing progressively anxious –

That I hadn’t been able to see David’s paintings in the painted flesh –

Instead I was only able to stare momentarily at electronic reproductions of objects of art that are so much about –

The poetry of their own silent physical presence –

Materiality and machinery –

The singular mass and fabric of each piece – its backstory of contemplation, hesitation, labour.

And momentarily out the window – at a colossal, wraparound Robert Ryman painting –

The utterly blanked-out view, a landscape abandoned by all landmarks.

 

And it wasn’t until the fourth day –

When the snow finally started to melt – that I started to find –

In the fields – David’s paintings –

Only in reverse –

As the white broke down – the layers disbanded, disintegrated, dissolved –

Offcuts appeared – shreds, fragments, debris –

A frayed strand of blue rope – the innards of a skinned tennis ball – the spikiest branches of the bramble bushes –

Beginnings –

And then – subdued colours, spare patterns –

And finally – a strange mood – a sense of the brevity of everything –

The dual sadness and glory of decay.

 

And at that moment – a journeying flock of Joanna’s starlings landed and spread out –

To pick over the mud of the defrosting field.

 

Sara Baume, March 2018