Overview
I'm interested in colour and how it is attached to memory. The ways in which it can both forge and summon an environment. When I see a colour that makes a strong impression on me, I try and commit it to memory, and this always relates to a place and to a story. — Megan Rooney
Megan Rooney (b. 1985, South Africa) works across a variety of media, including painting, installation and performance. Created in cycles, her paintings develop from accumulations of gesture and colour that are instinctively built up and sanded back. They become capsules of time, absorbing traces of their surrounding environments as well as the artist's own inner landscape. Often working on a large scale, painting is for Rooney as much a process of layering as it is retrieval – a physical exchange through which buried forms are gently coaxed or wrestled to the surface. Recent solo museum exhibitions include Echoes & Hours, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2024); HUSH SKY MURMUR HOLE, Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (2020); Green, I Want You Green, Salzburger Kunstverein (2020–21); and Fire On The Mountain, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Her work was recently presented in the exhibition Joan Mitchell / Megan Rooney: PAINTING FROM NATURE, held at the Espace Louis Vuitton Beijing in 2025. Her works are held in public and private collections worldwide, including Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; The Arts Council Collection, London; Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Baltimore Museum of Art; Ackland Museum of Art, Chapel Hill; and Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, among others. Rooney lives and works in London.
Megan Rooney (b. 1985, South Africa) works across a variety of media, including painting, installation and performance. Created in cycles, her paintings develop from accumulations of gesture and colour that are instinctively built up and sanded back. They become capsules of time, absorbing traces of their surrounding environments as well as the artist's own inner landscape. Often working on a large scale, painting is for Rooney as much a process of layering as it is retrieval – a physical exchange through which buried forms are gently coaxed or wrestled to the surface. Recent solo museum exhibitions include Echoes & Hours, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2024); HUSH SKY MURMUR HOLE, Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (2020); Green, I Want You Green, Salzburger Kunstverein (2020–21); and Fire On The Mountain, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Her work was recently presented in the exhibition Joan Mitchell / Megan Rooney: PAINTING FROM NATURE, held at the Espace Louis Vuitton Beijing in 2025. Her works are held in public and private collections worldwide, including Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; The Arts Council Collection, London; Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Baltimore Museum of Art; Ackland Museum of Art, Chapel Hill; and Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, among others. Rooney lives and works in London.
Videos
Kettle's Yard, Cambridge
