Artists

Megan Rooney

Press release

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

Thaddaeus Ropac London is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Megan Rooney. In Yellow Yellow Blue, Rooney allows her mark-making to be led almost entirely by colour, as she continues her ongoing investigation into abstraction as a means of storytelling. The London exhibition follows the recent opening of the exhibition JOAN MITCHELL / MEGAN ROONEY: PAINTING FROM NATURE(2025), at Espace Louis Vuitton Beijing, which continues until 19 October 2025, as well as Rooney’s first major UK solo exhibition, Echoes & Hours at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2024).

Spanning the gallery’s two floors at Thaddaeus Ropac London, Yellow Yellow Blue presents a group of new works on canvas in Rooney’s signature ‘wingspan’ format, equivalent to the full reach of the artist’s outstretched arms, alongside a number of large-scale canvases which invoke the encompassing presence of her murals, and a selection of works on paper. The body has a sustained presence in Rooney’s work, as both the subjective starting point and final site for the sedimentation of experiences explored through her interdisciplinary practice. Combining painting with dance, the exhibition will be accompanied by a new performance piece directed by Rooney and made in close collaboration with Temitope Ajose, Leah Marojević and the musician tyroneisaacstuart. Taking place on 12 June, Spin Down Sky II marks the latest chapter in the unlikely love story of a night butterfly and bolas spider, symbolic characters first explored by Rooney over two performances at Kettle’s Yard in 2024.