This is the official website for images of Eugene Magowan paintings.
Extract from Jane Ross, Gallery Curator essay, 2010:
For the past decade Eugene Magowan’s work has addressed the ascension of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger ideologies and the subsequent distortion of a societal framework which placed economic outcomes ahead of social outcomes. His most recent exhibition 'Something Very Important from Some Time Ago' is the culmination of Eugene Magowan’s investigations into the origins of modern Ireland’s ideologies, their corrosive impact and their eroded demise.
In recent years, Magowan began to extend his considerations to symbolic elements of society that are regarded significant within current social contexts. He considered these symbols in archaeological terms; how, in a historical context, their relevance and significance is fleetingly short-term; and how future societies will come to define contemporary societies through projected interpretation of such revered social symbols.
Within this context, Magowan has undertaken to explore in his new paintings, personal and societal memory, adopting structured grids as his painting format. Bearing physical marks that resemble cuneiform, these grids project a sensibility of archaeological artefacts conveying reflections on a society that has passed. Magowan projects too, the physical methodology in the emergence of these paintings; the intention of incised marks and time-layered paint, to convey an understanding of the organic process that leads to visual outcomes - paralleling the layered process of a realised society.
Eugene Magowan lives and works in Dublin. His work has been exhibited in Chicago, London, Frankfurt and throughout Ireland. His paintings are held in numerous prestigious collections in the US, the UK, Europe and in Ireland.