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