Watch a video of the exhibition
Rooney’s canvases are sites of sedimentation. Painted concurrently in yearly cycles through a ritual of layering, sanding down and repainting, they absorb traces of their environment, whether it is the subtle shifts in weather, sounds of distant trains, tensions of an uncertain world or the artist’s internal landscape. What appears on the surface is never predetermined; instead, marks are built instinctively, shaped by a process of observation, erasure and revelation. Rooney refers to her groups of paintings as ‘families’. Born out of shared atmospheric conditions, they are intimately related to one another as well as the lineage of paintings that has come before them.
In her latest body of work, Rooney explores the vast chromatic territory between yellow and blue, reminding us that the human eye can perceive more shades of green than any other colour. Completed in spring, the paintings capture a period of seasonal transition. ‘I have a special relationship to all the seasons because the light varies dramatically depending on the month, but spring is particularly sacred to me,’ Rooney says. ‘Long before green returns, nature slowly begins to add colour to her palette.’ Although ostensibly abstract, in her paintings recognisable forms are buried deep beneath the surface like pentimenti. Ladders, beehives, clouds, trees, skies, London’s cityscape and tombs weave through the exhibition like fugitive glimpses of a half-dreamed world.
Distant Dawn, 2025
Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas
199.6 x 152.3 cm (78.58 x 59.96 in)
The art historian T. J. Clark once described Frank Auerbach as a ‘peculiar kind’ of landscape painter. ‘Nature for him seems to be instantaneous,’ he wrote. ‘It leaps out of the void. The paint contorts to capture it, but always what the impasto seems to be after is not the “character” of the scene, or even its atmosphere, but rather, its simply being there for once.’ Rooney, too, grapples with form at the moment of becoming. For her, painting is ‘to be in a constant position of being lost, and trying to find a way forward, a way out, trying to find something to latch onto’. Rooney collects fragments of images and impressions as she travels to her studio, which are later transmuted into line, colour and gesture. As such, her canvases emerge as sensory landscapes, and enter into dialogue with a lineage of artists who too have responded to London’s hazy, industrial atmosphere – from Whistler and Monet to Auberach and Kossoff.
Insomnia of the Rider, 2025
Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas
199.6 x 152.3 (78.58 x 59.96 in)
— Excerpt from Like the flap of a wave, Emily LaBarge
Yellow Yellow Blue, 2025
Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas
199.6 x 152.3 cm (78.58 x 59.96 in)
You spend your life as a painter developing a relationship to colour and then testing the limits of that relationship. It’s radical, it’s ever-changing – it can submit to you and it can betray you. It always seduces, always excites.
— Megan Rooney
You came down (earth) II, 2025
Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas
300 x 250 cm (118.11 x 250 in)
Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas
199.6 x 152.3 cm (78.58 x 59.96 in)
A new performance piece directed by Rooney and made in close collaboration with Temitope Ajose, Leah Marojević and the musician tyroneisaacstuart was developed especially for the exhibition. Rooney’s performances are always episodic in nature, and Spin Down Sky II marked the latest chapter in the unlikely love story of the night butterfly and bolas spider – symbolic characters whose world was first explored over two performances at Kettle’s Yard in 2024.
Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas
188 x 246 cm (74.01 x 96.85 in)
Untitled, 2025
Acrylic, oil, pastel on paper
40 x 60 cm (15.74 x 23.62 in)
Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas
199.6 x 152.3 cm (78.58 x 59.96 in)
Acrylic, oil, pastel and oil stick on canvas
199.6 x 152.3 cm (78.58 x 59.96 in)
Based in London, Megan Rooney grew up between South Africa, Brazil and Canada, completing her BA at the University of Toronto followed by an MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London, in 2011. The exhibition Joan Mitchell / Megan Rooney: PAINTING FROM NATURE, will continue at the Espace Louis Vuitton Beijing until 19 October 2025. Rooney’s work has recently been shown in solo museum exhibitions at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2024); Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (2020–21); Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2020); and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2019). Her performance EVERYWHERE BEEN THERE, created in collaboration with choreographer Temitope Ajose-Cutting and musician Paolo Thorsen-Nagel, premiered at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 2019. The year prior, she performed SUN DOWN MOON UP as part of the Serpentine Galleries’ Park Nights programme in London.
Rooney’s work has also been presented in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Florida (2024); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2022); the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen (2021); Lyon Biennale (2019); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2019 and 2017); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Venice Biennale (2017); David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2017 and 2014); and Fondation d'entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris (2014), among others.
