Artist Talk Megan Rooney & Hans Ulrich Obrist
Join Megan Rooney and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, on Tuesday 28 September from 6.30pm for a conversation about the artist's practice and her current exhibition at the gallery BONES ROOTS FRUITS.
I imagine myself in flight when I am painting, hovering above the surface and searching for places to land, touching down and lifting off. I do this again and again until the surface starts to collect information… The painting becomes like a capsule, holding the weight of time. —Megan Rooney
Megan Rooney’s fascinating ability to tell stories and create a narrative is felt through the various media of her multidisciplinary approach. Always in flux, recurring characters speak to a narrative that is never fixed, the artist addresses urgent subjects of our time and presents each iteration of her work as part of her Gesamtkunstwerk. —Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries
Megan Rooney
Megan Rooney lives and works in London. Born in Canada in 1985, she grew up in South Africa, Brazil and Canada. She completed her BA at the University of Toronto, followed by an MA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College, London, in 2011.
Her recent solo exhibitions include: Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (2020-21); Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2020); SALTS, Basel (2019-20); Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2019); Drei, Cologne (2018); Tramway, Glasgow (2017); Cordova, Vienna (2017); Freymond-Guth Fine Arts, Basel (2017); Division Gallery, Toronto (2017); Seventeen, London (2016); and Croy Nielsen, Berlin (2016).
Forthcoming and recent group exhibitions include: Ludwig Forum Aachen (2021); 15th Lyon Biennial (2019); Paint, also known as Blood. Women, Affect, and Desire in Contemporary Painting, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2019); CHILDHOOD. Another banana day for the dream-fish, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); and (X) A Fantasy, David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2017).
Recent performances by Rooney include: EVERYWHERE BEEN THERE, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (2020); EVERYWHERE BEEN THERE, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2019); SUN DOWN MOON UP, Park Nights 2018, Serpentine Galleries, London (2018); Others got wings for flying, Tramway, Glasgow (2017); Poor Memory, Without Poetry Nothing is Possible, Salon Suisse, Venice Biennale (2017); f on your tongue, Project 1049, LUMA Foundation, performed on the Glacier 3000 Tissot Peak Walk, Gstaad, Switzerland (2016); Last Days. Last Days. Last Days., Serpentine Galleries, London (2015); and Sets of Poetry, Cell Project Space, London (2015).
Portrait by Eva Herzog
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Hans Ulrich Obrist(b. 1968, Zürich, Switzerland) is Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries in London. Prior to this, he was Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show World Soup (The Kitchen Show) in 1991 he has curated more than 350 exhibitions. Most notable amongst these are the Do It series (1993–), Take Me (I'm Yours) in London (1995), Paris (2015) New York (2016), and Milan (2017); and the Swiss Pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Biennale in Venice (2014). Obrist has also co-curated the Cities on The Move series (1996–2000), Laboratorium (1999); the operatic group exhibition Il Tempo del Postino in Manchester (2007) and Basel (2009), and The 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 Rooms series (2011–2015). Obrist's recent shows include IT'S URGENT at LUMA Arles (2019-2021), and Enzo Mari at Triennale Milano (2020). The Handwriting Project, which protests the disappearance of handwriting in the digital age, has been taking place on Instagram since 2013 (@hansulrichobrist).
In 2011 Obrist received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence, and in 2015 he was awarded the International Folkwang Prize, and most recently he was honoured by the Appraisers Association of America with the 2018 Award for Excellence in the Arts. Obrist has lectured internationally at academic and art institutions, and is contributing editor to several magazines and journals. Obrist's recent publications include Ways of Curating (2015), The Age of Earthquakes (2015), Lives of the Artists, Lives of Architects (2015), Mondialité (2017), Somewhere Totally Else (2018) and The Athens Dialogues (2018), Maria Lassnig: Letters (2020), Entrevistas Brasileiras: Volume 2 (2020), and the forthcoming Remember Nature (2021).
Portrait by Kate Berry
The event is free but capacity is limited, please rsvp to reserve your spot.
