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.

The Clearcut Amazon, 2023. Image courtesy of the Kerlin Gallery. (Brian Maguire/PA) 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.” Nature Morte (4), 2014.

Imagery courtesy of the .