“Edifice” (2021-22), oil on board, 24.5 x 32.5 in.
Returning to something after significant time away can prove challenging and even uncomfortable. For Melbourne-based artist Jeremy Geddes, however, this wasn’t the case. Periphery, his first solo exhibition in over a decade, served not as a jarring encounter with the exhibition space but instead as an energizing reentry.
Hosted at Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles, Periphery gathered works from the past five years, ranging from meticulous graphite renderings of cars to uncanny paintings of space shuttles crashing into buildings. Though somewhat daunting to stage, Geddes credits the gallery with bolstering his confidence during the exhibition’s run.
“There’s quite a lot of anxiety in creating fragile works that are then varnished, boxed, and shipped halfway around the world,” Geddes tells My Modern Met, “but everything turned out wonderfully, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the group at Thinkspace.”
In part due to his “slow production rate,” Geddes claims, the exhibition could maintain a singular focus. “[It] was less about which paintings and drawings to include and more about how to curate the works so they would hold together reasonably well when collected in one space. Over the past five years I had different interests that drew me in one direction or another, but they remained grouped within a fairly tight conceptual sphere, so there was a natural cohesion that happily emerged.”
That conceptual sphere primarily revolved around themes of alienation, technology, and ephemerality, not only through Geddes’ distinct subjects but also through his command over movement. Across his layered canvases, cosmonauts float and fall; cars and buses hang limply in the air, suspended from the ground; buildings burst apart, their debris rising like smoke; worlds collide and drift away.
“Foremost in my mind when I’m planning out a new piece is catching that ephemeral emotional note, isolating it and making it hopefully more present in the work,” Geddes remarks. “It’s always a difficult aspect for me to pinpoint and an even more tricky task to make other people feel the same emotions that you intended the work to convey.”
No matter how tricky a task, it’s one Geddes excels at. It’s difficult not to be drawn toward his artwork, each replete with distortions and surprises that demand an attentive eye.
“Each piece is an attempt to communicate something slightly oblique and non-verbal, and that’s always a fraught task with a fairly low success rate,” Geddes says. “If even just one work from [Periphery] can strike that emotional note in the viewer, then I’m happy.”
Periphery showed at Thinkspace earlier this year, but several works featured in the exhibition are still available for purchase. To learn more about the artist, visit Jeremy Geddes’s website.
Exhibited this past month at Thinkspace Projects, Periphery explored the meticulous art of Jeremy Geddes.
“Babel” (2019-2021), oil on board, 15 x 21.5 in.
“Deluge” (2024), oil on board, 35.4 x 35.4 in.
“Threshold” (2023-24), graphite on paper, 19.2 x 19.2 in.
“Corrosion” (2022-23), oil on board, 18 x 18 in.
Geddes specializes in uncanny scenes of alienation, ephemerality, and technology throughout his paintings and graphite drawings.
“Gnosis” (2023), graphite on paper, 11.8 x 23.6 in.
“Talisman,” oil on board, 6.75 x 13 in.
“Monument” (2021-22), oil on board, 33.4 x 29.5 in.
Artwork primarily involves cosmonauts, buildings, cars, or space shuttles colliding, floating, drifting, or bursting apart.
“Signal” (2023-24), oil on board, 19.6 x 39.3 in.
“Interstice” (2020), graphite on paper, 21 x 21.2 in.
“Follow Study” (2024), oil on board, 13 x 13.5 in.
Periphery served as Geddes’ first solo exhibition in over a decade, showcasing his work across the past five years.
“Trajectory” (2024), graphite on paper, 19.2 x 19.2 in.
“Fury 19” (2022-23), oil on board, 18 x 18 in.
“Tower” (2022), graphite on paper, 11 x 14.3 in.