Drawing plays a central role in Joanna Kidney’s practice. Her work is process based, encompassing drawing, encaustic painting, wall based assemblages and spatial drawing. It is drawing’s inherent characteristics; immediacy, open endedness, spontaneity, technical diversity and rawness, that pull Kidney back again and again to make drawing based work. This work, showing in the RHA Atrium, deals with the expansion of drawing within a space.
Curiosity and intuitive inventiveness are intrinsic to exploring the potential of materials within the process. The tension between marks/lines/forms, proportions, positive/negative space and colour is playfully tested. The work is informed simultaneously by geometry, symmetry and micro details. The unfolding dialogue between the 2D and 3D aspects of the work is integral to the process…the cycle of drawing within: how the 2D work informs the spatial drawing work and vice versa.
Intuition and the role it plays in the making of the work intrigues Kidney. Her work raises notions of the relationship between the subconscious, memory and intuition rather than seeking conclusions.
With an open-ended approach to making 2D and 3D drawings, Kidney seeks out the vitality of the artwork; digging to both create and reveal it.
