Rainforest 7, 2023
Acrylic on canvas
26 x 38 inches
Aleppo 4, 2017
Acrylic on canvas
78.5 x 157.5 inches
Aleppo 5, 2017
Acrylic on canvas
114 x 152 inches
Browning, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
43 x 79 inches
Bentiu Camp, South Sudan 1, 2018
Acrylic on canvas
79 x 157.5 inches
Arizona 6, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
55.25 x 78.5 inches
Arizona 8, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
42.5 x 58.5 inches
Arizona 14, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
35 x 47 inches
Arizona 15, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
31 x 39 inches
Grow House 2, 2015
Acrylic on canvas
55.1 x 78.7 inches
Arden Pepion, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
42 x 30 inches
Ashley Heavy Runner Loring - The Absence of a School Bus, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
34 x 34.25 inches
Justin Azure - The Impossibility of Justice, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
30.25 x 30.25 inches
Leo Wagner, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
34.25 x 34.25 inches
Rosie Kilmille, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
39.5 x 39.5 inches
Juarez, 2014
Acrylic on canvas
57.5 x 82.7 inches
Nature Morte (7), 2014
Acrylic on linen
59.1 x 63 inches
Brian Maguire’s painting practice is driven by the struggle against inequality and violence, and the pursuit of justice. Compelled towards the raw realities of human conflict, Maguire approaches painting foremost as an act of solidarity, rehumanising his subjects and recentring the narratives of the disenfranchised. Social engagement plays a central role, leading him to work closely and interactively with refugees, survivors of warzones, incarcerated peoples, and local newsrooms in locations including Sudan, Syria, São Paulo and Ciudad Juárez. This subject-led approach requires negotiating an exchange, establishing a method of working that attempts to “repay the debt” to its subjects. Maguire’s direct observation of conflict zones puts his practice adjacent to forms of war reporting or photojournalism, but while his artworks might begin as acts of bearing witness, his task in the studio is to transform his testimony into blisteringly powerful works of art. There is a resulting tension between the raw and visceral nature of Maguire’s subject matter and the seductive, illusory nature of painting itself. Rather than abandoning aestheticism, Maguire uses painterly skill, surface and texture to draw us into an uncomfortable relationship in which ethical vision functions as part of the poetic imagination, resituating art in the concrete social structures from which it is so often removed.
Brian Maguire lives and works in Dublin and Paris.
Brian Maguire’s new exhibition at Hugh Lane Gallery documents his activism and the shape-shifting nature of war, including its devastating impact, as explained by curator Michael Dempsey and the artist himself...
Artwork by some of the country’s leading artists will go on display before being auctioned in Dublin this week to raise funds for medical workers working in Gaza.
“Then I Laid the Floor” at Triskel in Cork features the work of James Concagh, Brian Maguire and Robert Chase Heishman
Many of nations galleries have impressive exhibitions over the next few weeks
Irish artist Brian Maguire travelled to the Amazon as research for his latest show in Dublin's Kerlin Gallery which runs until April 8th, 2023.
The Irish artist has turned his gaze and his anger on the social and ecological fallout from the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest
We owe it to Brian Maguire to be as blunt in describing his exhibition as he was in painting it: this show deals with death. “North and South of the Border” (at Rhona Hoffman Gallery) commits to displaying loss in three distinct forms. With so much variety in such a small space, it runs the risk of a cheap ploy relying on morbid fascination.
The masterful painting in Brian Maguire's work, the subject of a new exhibition at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery, is so beautiful that it takes a minute to process the sadness depicted—the aftermath of violence and the toll it exacts on the human condition. Whether it's the large building in Aleppo, Syria, a once-thriving structure now left in ruins by war, or the skulls and human remains left decaying in the Arizona desert, the casualty of our war on immigration, the only glimpse of hope we can find is the blue sky, a reminder that nature carries on with or without us.
When Brian Maguire, an Irish painter, talks about his work, he sounds more like a documentary filmmaker or a war correspondent. He wants to depict the plights of “people who are invisible, people that were put down,” he said. “I want to tell their story. We are storytellers." His exhibition at the Missoula Art Museum, “In the Light of Conscience,” draws on work from his travels across the world: Mexico and Arizona, Europe and Syria.
The Missoula Art Museum in Missoula, Montana, presents Brian Maguire: In the Light of Conscience, the artist’s first exhibition in a US museum. Maguire, an internationally renowned artist represented by galleries in New York City, Chicago, Dublin, and Paris, has worked closely with museum staff to put together this survey exhibition.
by Brandon Reintjes, Senior Curator and Carey Powers, Marketing and Communications Coordinator
In 2020, Irish artist Brian Maguire was invited by MAM to participate in the Emily Hall Tremaine Curatorial Research project investigating how the museum might present an exhibition around the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP).* MAM is planning a juried exhibition of contemporary Native artists who are engaged with this issue in addition to an exhibition of Maguire’s work featuring portraits of those who have gone missing. Maguire was in Missoula from May to September 2021, a rare artist-in-residency for the museum. Maguire came as a 2021 Fulbright Scholar, a prestige that allowed him to travel from Ireland specifically for this project.
Two paintings that each span at least 12 feet in width at the Missoula Art Museum depict the carnage of bombings in Aleppo, Syria, during its civil war.
They’re from a series Irish artist Brian Maguire has titled, “War Changes Its Address.”
“I think it's probably the simplest, most poignant way to talk about how these scenes are replayed over and over again,” said Carey Powers, the MAM’s communications and marketing director.
Maguire (b. 1951, Dublin) is an Irish artist whose work stems from his involvement in the civil rights movement of Northern Ireland in the 1970s. In his work, Maguire draws attention to marginalized voices by occupying a role as facilitator, which he is uniquely careful not to exploit. This overview of Maguire's human rights-focused paintings include important loans from Christian Groenke and Gulia Bruckman, the TIA Foundation in Sante Fe, New Mexico, the Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, the Kerlin Gallery in Dublin, the Fergus McCaffery Gallery in New York City, and Gallerie Christophe Gaillard In Paris.
The painter Brian Maguire’s latest show, Remains, tells a story that none of us can turn our back on.
"It will take a minimum of 18 days to walk to Phoenix. You will need a minimum of three gallons of water per day per person.” That’s 54 gallons of water. It’s too much to carry, but without it anyone who tries to cross the Mexico-US border by walking through the Arizona-Sonoran Desert will die. These figures come from an enlarged poster pasted to the wall and stretching to near ceiling height at the Crawford art gallery in Cork as part of the Irish painter Brian Maguire’s latest show, Remains.
After previously looking at the issue of kidnapped women in Mexico, the Irish artist's exhibition at the Crawford highlights the dangerous journey by migrants crossing the border to the US