Meagan Streader
From immersive installations that play with the physicality of light to redefine space, to sculptural works that create quiet moments of curiosity and contemplation, Meagan Streader renders light as a tangible, emotional force.
To encounter Meagan Streader’s work is to experience the phenomenon of light, not just as a series of wavelengths that bounce off surfaces to reveal the physical world, but as something itself physical, relational and emotional.
Slow Rinse, 2019, presented at Dark Mofo, is one of a series of site-specific works made with white electroluminescent tape extended long strands of glowing tape across the empty space of an abandoned building. Meagan constructed the sensation of cascading light beams through an open window, pooling and reflecting along the floor; simulating light refractions that feel so physical they alter perception of the room’s boundaries.
Her more recent solo show, The Space of Vibration, 2022, at MARS Gallery, included a series of wall-mounted LED lighting composition. Each one is an assemblage of glowing geometric lines zigzaging across one another; visual phrases repeating at different angles and in different shades of light, the effect of condensing three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional plane. These minimalist pieces playfully invoke the sensation of space and movement with the use of colour, each provokes a distinct emotional quality.
“Light, for me, is calming, healing, energetic, grounding, and spiritual. I want to articulate the miraculous or seductive quality of light, and its relationship to darkness,” she says.
It has taken years, and a pandemic, for Meagan’s distinctive visual language to emerge. Originally from Meanjin / Brisbane, Meagan completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2010. After a volunteering at a commercial gallery she moved into gallery management, then started an artist-run initiative. “But after a few years, I found it hard to ignore the deep urge to create my own work.”
In 2016, on a three-month residency in New York City, Meagan encountered works by light and space artists from the 1960s: Dan Flavin, Stephen Antonakos, Mary Corse, and Fred Sandback. She was drawn to the confidence and simplicity of their works, and how powerfully affecting and majestic these installations were.
Then in Melbourne, Meagan worked as a technician at a decorative light design studio where she learned about the material properties of light, and how to work with it technically.
“In the first few years of my practice I wanted to play with everything and anything I could get my hands on.”
During her time in Melbourne, curved, white neon tubing featured prominently in Meagan’s sculptures. Directly referencing the neon lights and architectural styles and structures encountered in New York, these neon works have mutated through her practice, becoming tools for encountering paths of light, limits of darkness, reflection and echoes.
In 2019, with larger and more frequent projects, Meagan became a full-time artist. The timing had a significant impact on the direction of her work. “Over the pandemic years—largely because of restrictions on public, immersive and installation projects—I developed a visual language working with combinations of glass, acrylic and light on a smaller scale.” Meagan attempted to recreate the feelings of enchantment and wonder of her larger works, but these new materials opened a door for her to create quiet, contemplative pieces. She says, “My interest was to create subtle and introspective works using combinations of materials that interact with light in unique ways to achieve quiet moments of awe and curiosity.”
Meagan’s work both responds to and subverts the historically male-dominated canon. One of the few female light artists in Australia, her works reflect on light-art from the ‘60s to now. She acknowledges that she began with a very romanticised notion of the Light and Space movement. “Now perhaps I am attempting to feminise and filter this history, to create new iterations of the works born from this era. I want to harness the powers of light to alter states of perception, induce sensation and immerse viewers in moments of time.”
Meagan lives in Naarm / Melbourne, working out of a large studio in Brunswick East. She works mostly alone, with occasional support during busy production periods.
Meagan is hands-on, and her process comprehensive. Her notebook is filled with concept scribbles. From these, she produces CAD drawings, digital renders and 3D printed models. She then sources materials, builds, assembles and wires the pieces. But it’s not entirely a solo effort. She works with public art consultants, lawyers, project managers, industrial designers, engineers, fabricators, material suppliers, a CNC machinist, a metalworker, electricians and installers. “I love the problem-solving challenges of creating the unknown. I am always striving to expand my material scope, and build up skills and knowledge of production processes to fully understand the limitations and possibilities of what I work with.”
Whilst her work is technical, her designs are embodied and intuitive; her relationship to light is constantly changing. This is evident in the deepening complexities and subtleties of her work. Her early “line” installations traced space with light, revealing angles and perspectives within existing architectures. They responded directly to how architectures mark and prescribe space, erasing and overshading the real physical structures, which were rendered in darkness against strands of bold electroluminescent wire. “How we perceive and respond to light and colour within spatial contexts is key to my creative methodology,” she explains.
“Creativity is an intuitive act, and the more I develop my practice the more I move towards abstract ideas about the felt experience and phenomenology—the miraculous and seductive—qualities of light . . . Light is affecting and transformative. It can influence our emotions and induce an array of sensations beyond the visual.”
Earlier this year Meagan’s work was included in the NGV’s Melbourne Now blockbuster survey, with her installation Sky Whispers. “[Melbourne Now] gave me the opportunity to work with installation again after so many years of hibernation. My love is deepest for large-scale, site-specific installations, and I want to push this side of my practice further. There is room to grow here.”