Wunderkammer were collections of rare, valuable,
historically important or unusual objects which
generally were compiled by a single person, normally
a scholar or nobleman, for study and/or entertainment.
Exotic natural objects, art, treasures and diverse items
of clothing or tools from distant lands and cultures
were all sought for the Wunderkammer. Renaissance
Wunderkammer were private spaces, created and
formed from a deeply held belief that all things were
linked to one another through either visible or invisible
similarities.
Wunderkammer
It was towards the end of the studio visit
that Joanna handed me a bundle of coral
shells she had collected from a beach in
Australia over twenty years ago. The corals
looked like particles of bone, twig-shaped
and weightless to hold. Their translucent
surfaces inscribed by a mass of spirals and
radial riblets. Strewn on the floor of her
studio, the shells sat amidst an arrangement
of specimens that will fill her cabinet of
curiosities - pieces of fabric, bundles of
Wunderkammer, 1997-2015, found objects, microscopic and diagrammatic references, remnants from artmaking,
drawings, insect pins, photographs, text, 244cm x 142cm x 122cm.
5 June - 18 July 2015
Mermaid Arts Centre, Co. Wicklow
Joanna Kidney
thread, remnants from her own artmaking,
<>
Design www.nathansomersdesign.ie Photography www.paultierney.com
With so much thanks to Mermaid Arts Centre, Wicklow Arts Office, Ballinglen Arts Foundation,
Cliodhna Shaffrey and Patrick Murphy.
www.joannakidney.com
Susan Montgomery).
(with Helen G. Blake, Joanne Boyle, Raine Hozier Byrne, Rachel Fallon, Laura Kelly and
on The Drawing Suite and a member of the artists collective The Tellurometer Project
She is a founding member of Outpost Studios, Bray, Co. Wicklow (2014); a featured artist
Bank, Dublin, OPW, UCD and the Department of the Environment, Northern Ireland.
and Heinrich Boll, Co. Mayo. Her work can be seen in the collections of AIB, The Central
in Cork Printmakers, Cork; Cill Rialaig, Co. Kerry; the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Co. Monaghan
Cork with The Tellurometer Project; Hexagon, a residential collaborative printmaking project
Residencies include Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Co Mayo; The LFTT Library, The Guesthouse,
Award of Excellence.
an Artlinks Bursary; the Wicklow County Council Tyrone Guthrie Centre Bursary and a DIT
Open Exhibition, Mermaid Arts Centre (selected by Patrick Murphy, Director RHA, Dublin);
several Wicklow County Council individual and group Bursaries; Runner-up Award,
Awards and bursaries include a Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship; RHA Studio Award;
Proctor), Ashford Gallery, RHA, Dublin.
Martin), Sligo Art Gallery and Works on Paper (three person show with Gerard Cox and Jane
entries for First National Solo Exhibition Award (three person show with Sinead Fox and Niall
Gallerie HD Nick, France; Les Quatre Saisons de l’Art, Gallerie HD Nick, France; Shortlisted
Contemporary Art from Ireland, European Central Bank, Germany, Metamorphosis in White,
Visual, Carlow; RHA Annual Exhibition, RHA, Dublin; Boyle Arts Festival, Co. Roscommon;
Triskel Arts Centre, Cork. Selected group shows include Eigse Carlow Arts Festival,
In and out of a familiar world, Linenhall Arts Centre, Co. Mayo; The shape of a moment,
Project, Co. Dublin; This speaking place, Stone Gallery, Dublin; Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast;
RHA Atrium Gallery, Dublin; Sing yourself to where the singing comes from, The Drawing
Galway (upcoming); Wunderkammer, Mermaid Arts Centre, Wicklow; Dig, undig, redig,
Selected solo exhibitions include Drawer in Residence/Solo show, Galway Arts Centre,
Joanna Kidney was born in Dublin, currently lives in Co. Wicklow.
- a spot of red, a segment of a circle, a
then appears to translate in her drawings is
which they are not.
that is fundamentally based in drawing.
space, scarred and rhythmed by accidents
echo, repeating and multiplying. And what
representing the appearance of something
decorative skeletons would inspire a practice
and background–an ambiguous, open
no mark remains to itself, but calls out for an
read her drawings, rather than see them as
not surprising that the corals with their
the interplay between foreground (motifs)
making, visibly manifest and legible, where
a form of mapping, in part, so that we might
remains central to her thinking. And it is
their luminous presence dissipates). It is in
simplicity and obsessiveness of her mark-
out in the infinitesimal and her art suggests
coexistence of coherence and mystery -
could imagine, once the very moment of
happens in the act of looking. In the
For Joanna, this interconnectivity is sought
shell–the delicate pattern suggesting the
(They might disappear, too, in a bleep, we
with Joanna’s art, the ultimate pleasure
neutrons making up the farthest of stars.
found years ago on the surface of the coral
in a state of becoming, rather than static.
And, so, it would seem, in our interaction
in the human body to the electrons and
from which these spring. An inspiration
rise to their formation. They appear as if
reality, the thing itself, but exists in the gaps.
imagine exists between the tiniest cells
storage place of her ideas and the materials
to float through the very space that gives
show that meaning does not come from
between all things and matter – as we might
traditional taxonomic display, it too is the
universe.
Like fragments of organic growth they seem
Like the poets, who hampered by language,
physical world around us, the connectivity
an aura of institutional authority and imitate
unseen dynamic, structuring things in the
she draws with paint using a metal tool.
an act of thinking, an act of remembering.
a scene – our interrelationship with the
ends of artmaking. If her cabinet will present
to evoke a metaphysical one – conjuring an
wave forms of tracks, dots and spirals which
process of translation. And they perform as
to thinking through our existence within
trivial finds and keeping the worthless loose
artmaking that begins in the physical realm
ennobling the central motif – the curling
drawings are always, in themselves about a
as a medium, but always doing so in relation
by nature a collector, collecting seemingly
But it is also a process of discovery of
and veined, and provide a dramatic setting,
molluscs sought out on her walks - her
and methods in an exploration of drawing
trees, spots. Like many other artists she is
the potentialities of diverse materials.
soft whitish colour, are muddied, marked
and sea creatures, or the lichen and
drawing, using a diverse range of materials
meanders, waves, foams, cracks, stripes,
discovery–of the medium of drawing and
or strong green or blue, but more often a
Ernst Haeckel’s drawings of microorganisms
a contemporary experimental approach to
equations patterning symmetries, spirals,
are in themselves about a process of
backgrounds, sometimes a vivid yellow,
published illustrations of biologists, such as
proceeds. Her methodologies demonstrate
living matter: - those invisible mathematical
intuitively led, Joanna creates works which
her feeling for colour. Here single coloured
down microscopes or pouring over the
precisely in this way that Joanna Kidney’s art
ordered complexity found everywhere in
of a liberating approach to art-making,
employment of a different technique, and in
If these origins are sourced through looking
understanding our place in the universe’. It is
display gives evidence of her quest for the
moving freely, without a goal’. Indicative
their exploration of another medium, the
subjective position and the act of memory.
window onto the world, but a device for
personalised natural history museum. The
Sketchbook’, 1925), ‘a line goes for a walk,
add another dimension to her work–in
forms. They remain elusive, coming from a
writing). Therefore, ‘drawing is not a
and pinned to her Cabinet’s walls, like a
perception of drawing (from his ‘Pedagogical
expansion of her drawing–but they also
represent or describe specific natural
of being (drawing, we remember predates
as well as the sources–to be classified
playful. It is a reminder too of Paul Klee’s
These paintings can clearly be read as an
about the totality of an image nor do they
but it is also in itself the pre-eminent sign
raw matter of her artmaking - the residual,
evolvement of a practice that is actively
onto to the waxy surface of the painting.
suggest organic influences, they are not
signs, by which we map the physical world,
invisible things, like cells and microbes. The
which is finally heated away - we see the
like forms are repeated in various guises
on the white paper. While these drawings
than say that of painting: ‘It is a locus for
microscopic biological entities, living
lines of coloured thread on soluble fabric
series of encaustic paintings where organic-
lattice-like compositions seem to float
drawing exists at another level in the psyche,
paper and sourced from the Web, depicting
made with thousands of machine stitched
These same ideas are explored further in a
centre, leaving backgrounds blank, so the
with Benjamin (as others have too), that
geometric grid; images printed on cheap
arcs, spirals and blobs–rippling from the
–a short text written in 1917–to conclude,
grow, how things flow.
boot and hardened into the shape of a
repetitive mark-making–triangles, loops,
Benjamin’s ‘Painting and the Graphic Arts’
invisible forces - hinting at how living things
wings; mud-prints, cut by the heel of a
in point, each constructed out of multiple
Human’, she offers a reading of Walter
atmosphere to these work.
like a vortex of a cluster of activity, orders
to have congealed into imaginary butterfly
A series of blue ink monoprints are a case
In Emma Dexters’ essay ‘to Draw is to be
fissure of lines–which imbues a mysterious
the immediacy of dynamic patterning, which
such as the scrapings of paint which seem
Cliodhna Shaffrey is Director of Temple Bar
Galleries and Studios, Dublin.
And, in the final work of this exhibition, a
large-scale translucent hanging sculpture,
Plot VI, 2015, encaustic on panel, 61cm x 61cm >