Brian Maguire: La Grande Illusion

Hugh Lane Gallery, which houses one of Ireland’s most exciting collections of modern and contemporary Irish and international art, presents a major exhibition of the work of renowned Irish painter Brian Maguire.

Co-curated by the museum’s Head of Exhibitions, Michael Dempsey, and Director, Barbara Dawson, La Grande Illusion highlights the artist’s quest to draw attention to global injustices and igniting critical conversations on human rights through his visceral and intimate paintings.

The exhibition spans two decades of work, a period of intense productivity for Maguire, illustrating his activism through large-scale paintings from projects in the Amazon (2022), Brazil (2022–23), the Mediterranean (2016), Mexico (2012–15), Syria (2017), Sudan (2018), and the United States (2022). 

By embedding himself in the communities he paints—from the streets of Juárez to the war-torn neighbourhoods of Aleppo—Maguire uses his canvas as testimony to the silenced and the forgotten, exploring themes of violence, the drug and gun trades, and damage to the environment.

According to Michael Dempsey, Head of Exhibitions at Hugh Lane Gallery: “Art for Maguire is a radical process of passion and indignation, which carries the potential of alternative futures. 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.” 

In looking at the plight of those erased by media or state institutions, Maguire reminds us just why painting matters.

The artist explains: “The image carries the present, the medium carries the hope. The perpetrators of the injustice are worldwide and singular and that’s what makes the stories the same. The individual painting is anecdotal but when taken as a body of work, it represents global capitalism which while invisible is at the same time all-pervasive.”

Brian Maguire: La Grande Illusion officially opens on October 3, 2024 and runs until March 23, 2025. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue featuring essays by Lucy Cotter, Michael Dempsey, Marc Donnadieu and Christian Viveros-Fauné.

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