By Natale Heslop
RMIT journalism graduate
Light artist Meagan Streader transforms Newport’s Substation into an immersive encounter with its own history
Upon entering The Substation in Newport, an energetic pull can be felt. Colourful neon and LED installations entice me in. The experience of moving through the mystical light installation A Residual Pulse by artist Meagan Streader begins…
A Residual Pulse is Streader’s first major exhibition at The Substation. It is a bespoke installation created entirely around the building itself. Lines of illumination trace across multiple galleries, creating portal-like entries that inspire curiosity along with an almost playful treasure hunt for neon formations throughout the historic structure. Suspended neon sculptures hover like fragments of something that once hummed, reviving the residual pulse.
Streader drew inspiration from the history of The Substation: “The building itself carries that community history in its bones. Powering trains that moved people, the artist-occupiers who followed, each leaving their own kind of mark. I drew directly from what those histories left behind in the architecture, so in a sense, the community context was already embedded in the material I was working with.”
The collaboration took root last August, when conversations between Streader and The Substation’s creative director, Nuala Furtado, led to an invitation to light up the space. With both originally from Brisbane, the connection was meant to be. Streader was given studio space on-site to develop the work over a few months ahead of opening night. Furtado describes the result: “The work is site responsive, the hexagonal shapes are responding to the tessellated tiles around, but they also create portals, there is a gentle flicker in the work, and that is a nod to the electrical substation history of the space, but also perhaps asks us to question reality and our reliance on big tech in our everyday lives.”
Even after a decade of working with light, Streader says she is “still fascinated by how something so immaterial can profoundly alter our emotional and physical perception of a space. I can plan a work down to the millimetre and still feel genuinely moved when it comes to life; suddenly, a building’s entire history feels present and close.”
The experience stayed with me like no other installation. Streader’s merging of light inside the space is immersive, requiring active engagement; an adjustment of eyesight, a blurring of light, a tonal shift that evokes a different feeling and mood. The effect is less about art in a space than about the space itself presenting art.
For Newport locals, this activation brings a sense of time travel for The Substation, from its past to its present, and as visitors arrive, their presence creates future effects; the loop of time is tangible in Streader’s creation of light…an almost spiritual quality.
The Substation is a neighbourhood institution, a building the community has already claimed and repurposed. Streader’s work asks what else it might be holding. A Residual Pulse is free, unhurried, and open until late August. It rewards more than a single visit.
A Residual Pulse, Meagan Streader.
The Substation, 1 Market Street, Newport.
21 May – 22 August 2026. Free entry.
