Jeremy Geddes: suspended figures across drawing, painting and editions

Jeremy Geddes makes carefully rendered images in which bodies seem to have lost their ordinary relationship with gravity. Cosmonauts drift through empty space; figures fall, collide or hover without a reassuring ground beneath them. Born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1974 and based in Melbourne, he studied painting at the Victorian College of the Arts before becoming a full-time painter in 2003. His recognisable subjects depend on an uneasy combination: objects appear materially convincing while the events they inhabit resist a settled explanation. Biography

That uncertainty is central to the account Geddes gave of Periphery, his 2025 solo exhibition at Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles. He described paintings and drawings developed over five years, with each work often presenting a particular technical difficulty. His statement connected their atmosphere to the unsettling moment when peripheral vision suggests something the mind cannot quite resolve. Rather than supplying one story for every suspended figure, this gives viewers a useful way to approach the work: look at the tension between precise description and incomplete recognition. Artist statement

The exhibition also makes the range of his studio practice tangible. Thinkspace records Signal as oil on board, while Trajectory is a graphite drawing on paper. Those material descriptions matter even when images circulate at similar sizes on a screen. Graphite and painted colour build their surfaces differently; an edition reproducing either image is another object again. The original Trajectory is dated 2024 and measures 49 × 49 cm. The print released in 2026 has a 50 × 50 cm image on a larger sheet, so the shared title connects two materially distinct works rather than two interchangeable examples. Works, Print

Geddes’s editions have also used different publishing arrangements. His artist-direct Trajectory was a fixed run of 300, while Thinkspace’s Messenger was offered as a timed edition, with the number determined by orders received during the announced window. Messenger was printed by Static Medium on Moab Entrada paper before being sent to the artist for signing and numbering. The publisher, paper and release structure are therefore useful identifying details alongside the image itself; the title alone does not describe the complete edition. Messenger

Sculpture introduces another change of scale and support. Through MoonCrane Studio, the cosmonaut imagery extends into resin, bronze and stainless steel. Wilderness’s resin versions combine a cosmonaut with five birds, while a stainless-steel version is listed with a wood presentation box and an original drawing. Foundation and Fury 11 have their own sizes and finishes. These collaborations allow the floating figure to occupy actual space, but their edition sizes and materials belong to specific versions. Reading those distinctions preserves the physical character of the object behind the familiar motif. Sculptures