Rua Red

On Friday 6 March. Rua Red launches its 2026 gallery programme with 'These Beautiful Men', a new commission by artist Brian Maguire

Since October 2025, Maguire has worked in close collaboration with men residing at Citywest International Protection Accomodation Services (IPAS) in South Dublin County. Three times a week Maguire visits the centre, where Rua Red runs an art studio led by artist Michael Mangan. Maguire meets with the men, listens to the stories of their journeys while drawing their portraits.

Life at CityWest IPAS is marked by transience and uncertainty. Residents are relocated to accommodation at other locations at very short notice, and typically within three weeks of arrival. This ever-present condition of impermanence informs Maguire’s drawings, which are rapid responses made in charcoal. They underscore the urgency and fragility of the encounters on which the work is based.

Within a context in which individuals are often reduced to statistics, Maguire’s portraits consider what it means to be seen, acknowledged and brought into representation. The sitter is given agency, and dignity.

This exhibition runs in tandem with Brian Maguire: Portraits—The Failure of the State, opening Tuesday, February 10, Irish Arts Center (IAC), in New York. Both exhibitions are curated by Maolíosa Boyle and Jonathan Cummins, and centre on Maguire's portraiture as an act of turning towards a person, their family, and community, spending time and bearing witness where justice is absent.

Brian Maguire lives and works in Dublin and Paris. Brian Maguire’s painting practice is driven by the struggle against inequality and violence, and the pursuit of justice. His process is foremost 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. Recent solo exhibitions include Social Forms: Art as Global Citizenship, Converge 45, Portland (2023); law of the land, Kunsthall 3,14, Bergen, Norway (2023); The Clock Winds Down, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2023); In The Light Of Conscience, Missoula Art Museum, Montana (2022); North and South of the Border, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago (2022); Remains, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland (2021); An Anatomy of Politics, Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris (2021).

Admission to the gallery is free. Rua Red is proud to be supported by the Arts Council, South Dublin County Council, Creative Ireland, and the Government of Ireland; Project Ireland 2040.

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