Oil on linen painting of a cloud backdrop with a teacup painted as the centre image 

Robin Megannity imbues his images with the retro appearance of traditional oil paintings. Unusually for a contemporary artist, he makes use of oil paint's illusionistic potential, building up fictional scenarios in fine layers to suggest real-life scenes. He employs a changing cast of actors to pose with apparently meaningful gestures amid an assortment of symbolic props. Muted colours create claustrophobic shadows, and cryptic titles add to an atmosphere of narrative suspense. Megannity’s works operate as glimpses of storylines, petrified into enigmatic yet intriguing mysteries.

In l’appel du vide, Megannity presents a juxtaposition: a still life is overlaid upon a skyscape. The unconventional composition is elucidated by the work’s title, which translates to ‘the call of the void’: that strange, inexplicable urge one might feel to complete a dangerous action, like jumping off a cliff. Like the still life in this work, such an urge appears in the mind like a flash, disrupting formerly calm thoughts, themselves evoked here by the cloudscape. Using the grammar of painterly conventions, l’appel du vide seems to articulate a rare liminal point, or a psychological quiver, between the conscious and the unconscious mind.

Robin Megannity's painting 'on oath', 2023 Oil on linen 67 x 51 cm 26 3/8 x 20 1/8 in: a glitched painting of a Dutch still life painting

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Installation shots of Robin Megannity's exhibition 'Call of The Void' at Workplace | London

Robin Megannity

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Robin Megannity

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