‘These Beautiful Men’, a newly commissioned body of work and exhibition by artist Brian Maguire, opens at Rua Red, the South Dublin Arts Centre in Tallaght, on March 6 and runs until May 9. The renowned Irish artist has travelled the world to highlight injustice and the precarity of life for vulnerable communities, working in Montana (2020-25), the Amazon (2022-23), Arizona/US-Mexico border (2021-22), South Sudan (2018), Aleppo, Syria (2017), the Mediterranean Sea (2016), Ciudad Juárez, Mexico (2008-2015), and São Paulo, Brazil (1998-2003) to name a few. For this exhibition he stayed at home.
Since October 2025, Maguire has been drawing men temporarily residing at an International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) Centre, a primary reception and processing centre for international protection applicants. Maguire and Rua Red established a temporary art studio within the IPAS centre where artist Michael Mangan runs workshops three times a week. While Brian draws portraits of the men, participants in Mangan’s workshop are invited to paint their understanding of home and hopes for the future. Maguire’s portraits will be presented in Rua Red’s Gallery One, while Gallery Two will feature audio recordings of the men’s experiences and journeys to Ireland. Life in the IPAS centre is marked by transience and uncertainty. Residents are relocated to accommodation at other locations at very short notice, typically within three weeks of arrival. This ever-present condition of impermanence informs Maguire’s drawings, which are rapid responses made in charcoal. The works underscore the urgency and fragility of the encounters on which they are based.
The exhibition at Rua Red runs concurrently and in dialogue with the exhibition ‘Brian Maguire: Portraits— The Failure of the State’, currently on view at the Irish Arts Centre (IAC), New York. Both exhibitions, curated by Jonathan Cummins and Maolíosa Boyle, centre on portraiture as an act of sustained attention — a turning towards another person, their family, and community — and bearing witness through time spent looking and listening to their stories and experiences.
Images are courtesy Brian Maguire and Rua Red.
