1. The artist painted directly onto the walls of Kettle’s Yard
Come to Kettle’s Yard during Megan Rooney: Echoes & Hours, and you will encounter a unique artwork that will only be seen by those who visit the galleries this summer. The artist, Megan Rooney, has worked directly onto the walls of Gallery 2. She has transformed its white walls into an immersive painting, surrounding the viewer with vivid colours, textures and stories.
When Rooney began the mural, she imagined that warm summer yellow would fill the space, fit for a summer exhibition, but as time went on the blues dominated. The mural’s deep cobalt, ultramarine, and flashes of a glowing periwinkle nod to the weather – it was the wettest spring since records began while she was painting. This palette also reflects Rooney’s knowledge of the history of painting and mark making. It is no coincidence that archaeologists uncovered a blue room in Pompeii in the same weeks that she painted at Kettle’s Yard.
If you look closely, you might spot the original corn-coloured base peeking through the mural’s layers.

2. The paintings in Gallery 1 are a ‘family’

While Rooney spent just three weeks painting the mural, it took the artist a year to make the group of paintings on display in Gallery 1. Each one is about as wide as her outstretched arms, her body guided her mark making. She did not start and finish each canvas consecutively, instead, she painted them as group in a cycle of activity.
Because of this, the artist describes her groups of paintings as ‘families’ with connections, resemblances, rivalries and tensions. Each painting provides the others with counterpoints and balance – one very blue, another very pink, others dark and moody, contrasting with whirlwinds of bright colour elsewhere. You might be able to spot the similarities between the works, as colours and marks ‘chase’ across the canvases. The paintings encourage slow looking and there is no single meaning or correct response, instead, they simply ask you to stay a while.
3. The paintings recall Rooney’s early love of colour during her childhood
Rooney was born in South Africa, but she grew up first in the buzz of Rio de Janeiro and then in the suburbs of Toronto. When she moved to Toronto, her mother painted their family home flamenco pink, to the surprise of their neighbours. Rooney’s mother encouraged Megan’s early love of colour and allowed her to repeatedly repaint her bedroom in a dazzling assortment of colours.
In the Research Space, you can find a series of works on paper in which Rooney has worked quickly to experiment with various colour combinations. Unlike the paintings downstairs, which Rooney made in cycles of repeated sanding and overpainting, these works on paper have not had any layers of paint erased away. They are fresh, made one by one, and they recall the artists early love of colour during her childhood.

4. The exhibition is accompanied by a new performance work
At the exhibition opening on 21 June, a performance took place called Spin Down Sky. This was developed by Rooney – who has a background in dance – in close collaboration with the choreographer Temitope Ajose, the dancer Leah Marojević and the musician tyroneisaacstuart. It brings the mural to life; the painting becomes a sky for the performers to fly within, as they move deftly around the space to tyroneisaacstuart’s saxophone soundtrack. You’ll be able to experience the performance in the galleries on 5 October.
5. Like Jim Ede, Megan Rooney finds inspiration in light and nature
During Megan Rooney: Echoes & Hours, visitors to the house will see a new painting by Rooney in the lower extension library. Titled Old Sky (Blue), it brings a revitalising presence to the otherwise static arrangement of artworks and objects, like a new guest among familiar friends.
Like Jim Ede, who created Kettle’s Yard, Rooney takes inspiration from the shifting qualities of natural light and the changing patterns of the seasons. Drawing parallels with the importance of light and shadow in the Kettle’s Yard house, Rooney speaks of her paintings as things which can capture sunlight, the weather and the climate into a visual capsule of time.
Megan Rooney: Echoes & Hours opened on the summer solstice with fresh, still-wet paint, and closes on 6 October 2024.
