Artist Brian Maguire hopes visitors to exhibition will ‘identify with the dead’

Irish contemporary artist Brian Maguire said he hopes visitors to his upcoming exhibition at the Hugh Lane Gallery will “identify with the dead”.

Entitled La Grande Illusion, the exhibition spans nearly two decades of work from a prolific period of the artist’s career (2007-2024) and highlights the artist’s interest in conflict and injustices around the world.

Co-curated by the museum’s head of exhibitions Michael Dempsey, and director Barbara Dawson, La Grande Illusion displays themes of war, the drug trade, and damage to the environment.

Maguire frequently embeds himself in the communities he paints, from the streets of Juarez in Mexico to warn-torn neighbourhoods of Aleppo, with the artist using his canvas as testimony to the silenced and forgotten.

Maguire told the PA news agency his works seek to tell previously untold stories and highlight injustices, citing his paintings focusing on the disappearance of people in Juarez as an example of this.

He said: “I’ve worked with dead women and men from murder where there’s no investigation, both in North America and in Mexico, and that’s about bringing what’s hidden to the fore.

“Perhaps that’s what it’s all about, this show. It’s taking the unspoken and presenting it.

“The issue of aesthetics comes in, in that the work needs to be really damn attractive, given its harsh message, in order to survive, to not just be, ‘get that out of here’.”

Asked what he wants viewers to take away from the exhibition, the artist said: “I would just hope they would identify with the dead.”

Born in County Wicklow in 1951, Maguire said the conflict that erupted in Northern Ireland when he was a teenager greatly impacted him.

“When the North exploded at that time, it interested me. I was aware of it and I would think about it. It was just timing, location and age that made me familiar with violence,” he said.

“I didn’t face the war in Ireland head on, because to make work about the place you’re from is a very difficult thing, because you know everything, and you know the consequences of every intonation that you make.

“Whereas when you go abroad, the distance simplifies everything. You can see what’s wrong without having all the ifs and buts and ands, you just see it.”

He talked about the importance of travelling to the areas he wishes to paint and embedding himself in the community.

“It’s obvious to go, and also that if you go, you get to talk to the people who are there, who are living with the situation and it’s important to capture their voice, if they want you to,” he said.

On the relevance of his work in the context of escalation in the Middle East, Maguire said: “We have two new addresses for war.

“We’ve had wars in Gaza before and in Lebanon and, God forbid, the West Bank.

“It’s not something I’m pleased about. It’s terrible, but it’s relevant today. War does change its address. That’s all it does. It’s a constant presence.”

Mr Dempsey said: “In the exhibition, Maguire presents an expanded view of war– seen as a constant cycle of corrupted power and death – it encompasses capital, class, gender, and post-colonial legacies.

“Intimate and uncompromising, his paintings form a demand for social justice and are an act of solidarity with families and communities.”

Brian Maguire: La Grande Illusion opens on October 3 2024 at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin and runs until March 23 2025.