A mauve monochromatic painting by Robin Megannity of a woman biting into an ice cube

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 PICA, Megannity’s subject is rendered in the act of eating an ice cube. His model is his partner, who lives with PICA, an eating disorder that involves eating items not typically considered food and with no nutritional value; for her, eating ice is a means of displacement. The work’s close cropping and sensitive, naturalistic style shed real light on a little-known disorder, yet equally, the composition and the purple, monochromatic palette maintain a surrealism, and a sense of the inexplicable, characteristic of Megannity’s work and the subjects it describes.

PICA

Portrait

A portrait of Robin Megannity in his studio by John-Paul Brown

New works by Robin Megannity and Rachel Lancaster are featured in 

, a curated exhibition of 8 artists in a dialogue surrounding intimacy, distance, ease, and effort at The Shophouse, Hong Kong. The exhibition examines our innate yearning for tenderness. In a world of trials and trouble – all we can do is ask that our discomfort be gentle now, and gentle again.


Featuring works on canvas, video, and kinetic installations, the exhibition plays with a precarious balance of soft tensions. The works highlight moments of suspense, either captured through an isolated image or prolonged via time-based media with postponed or indefinite endings. The artworks collectively allude to the notion of ‘the moment before’ – namely the moment before a conclusion is revealed and before relief or devastation is confirmed. Bound together by broken stories, the exhibition underscores a sense of incompletion that is paradoxically evocative of placidity and disquietude.


An array of non-contiguous narratives – reflecting topics of iconographic duality, identity construction, affective phenomena, geographical mobility, and more – is brought to the surface, elucidating glimpses of conflict that breach the peace. As if a distorted mirror haven enveloped in hushed chatter,  the exhibition proposes a choice – should we acknowledge the pain, or do we accept the comfort?

A white walled gallery with three artworks hung on the walls and two slim windows 

A white walled gallery with two artworks hung on the walls one with a face with light glittering off it and a paintin gby rachel lancaster of two hands holding a crumpled piece of paper

Gentle Again

Artworks

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Rachel Lancaster

Robin Megannity