Emma Dabiri Instagram – Over Our Heads the Hollow Seas Closed Up,
The Unknown Dead
Strange Fruit
What an honour be on the board of Hugh Lane @thehughlane Dublins public contemporary art gallery, the oldest extant 20th century public modern art gallery in the world
I came back to Dublin for today’s board meeting and took the opportunity to visit Brian McGuires new exhibition La Grande Illusion. I walked in and within moments was in floods of tears…I wasn’t ready for the images, the Mediterranean paintings I found particularly haunting
I am an inherently politicised person, I’ve never been interested in making something for the aesthetics of it alone, while I appreciate aesthetics, what motivates my own work, and the work of artists that most moves me most is work that challenges the injustices upon which our “civilisation” has been built.
I’m also a big fan of abstraction, so the suggestive nature of Brian’s work exerts a far more potent and powerful force than a more explicit image would on me.
Gosh I’m somewhat overcome…what’s happening to our brothers and sisters in the Mediterranean Sea is really one of the great crimes of our time (and there are many). This exhibition was a huge reminder of that to me. Go and see it, it’s hauntingly beautiful and incredibly important 🩵
Very mad seeing Don’t Touch My Hair just chillin there in Modern Irish Writing & Poetry
Extremely fitting that the gallery faces the Garden of Remembrance – dedicated ‘to all those who gave their lives in the cause of Irish freedom’.
Peep the statue as well which is based on the legend of the Children of Lir, in which four children are transformed into swans and remain so for 900 years before becoming human again. A poem by Liam Mac Uistin is inscribed on the wall behind the sculpture and concludes: ‘O generations of freedom remember us, the generations of the vision.’ 🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪 | Posted on 13/Mar/2025 22:18:27
