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Marian Maguire – WORLD – 9-27 July 2024

 

In four gigantic leaps Marian Maguire bounds across an earthly timeline from pre-history to the current era. Plants, animals, minerals, fire and water pack these highly detailed prints, that are shaped as worlds but also form eyes. Alongside the World prints are the two major works from her 2022 Enlightenment Project series, which were the precursor to these images and question the direction of Western history.

ARTIST TALK: Sat 20 July, 12noon

World 1, by Marian Maguire, 2024, archival inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Photorag 308gsm, 580 x 780mm, $2200 unframed
World 2, by Marian Maguire, 2024, archival inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Photorag 308gsm, 580 x 780mm, $2200 unframed

World 3, by Marian Maguire, 2024, archival inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Photorag 308gsm, 580 x 780mm, $2200 unframed

World 4, by Marian Maguire, 2024, archival inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Photorag 308gsm, 580 x 780mm, $2200 unframed

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These works were included in an exhibition at the Ashburton Art Gallery earlier this year.
Here is the exhibition text (thank you James Hope):


Marian Maguire – The Enlightenment Project (expanded)
Ashburton Art Gallery, 18 Feb–14 April, 2024

The Enlightenment, a cultural, scientific and philosophical movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, sought to sweep away the ‘darkness’ of superstition from European society to usher in a new age of ‘light’. The mysteries of nature and the universe as the workings of God could be accessible through the application of human reason, rather than submission to blind faith as ordained by the Church and the power it vested in monarchy. The promotion of knowledge, freedom and happiness were the goals for a new humanity enlightened by rational enquiry.
Through this project Marian Maguire set herself the ambitious task of comprehending the cultural and intellectual history of the West through visual form. As well as considering the metaphysical tradition of the era, she investigated important events and themes in order to understand the Enlightenment’s significance to European expansionism and its consequences, including the colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Counterpointing the European focus of the major works Sight and Blindness I: Reason and Sight and Blindness II: Expansion, and the thirty one Eye prints, Maguire has included a new major work with a parallel perspective. She has visualised the Māori creation story: the separation of Ranginui (sky) and Papatūānuku (earth) by Tāne. Pushing his parents apart he let the light in and thus life flourished. An additional sequence of four World works starts in prehistory, when trees and animals were abundant, continuing into the Anthropocene Era where Homo Sapiens have come to dominate other life forms and energetically exploit the Earth’s resources. This brings us to questions about the future.
As the ‘tree of knowledge’ in the Encyclopédie (1751) shows, knowledge has a genealogy that can be mapped; it is whakapapa too that holds the essence of knowledge linking all living things back to their ultimate origins. Through this lineage humanity cannot be separated from the natural world that it seeks to understand, which is the fundamental source of all knowledge.

'The Separation of Ranginui and Papatūānuku', by Marian Maguire, 2023-24, Archival inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Photorag 308gsm, 985 x 1310mm