C103 Review

New York: Brian Maguire, Bayview Project

Brian Maguire: billboard from Bayview Project, containing four paintings by Maguire; courtesy Gagosian Gallery

As you wander around New York City advertising billboards scream out at you on every corner to consume, to desire, to buy into the 'American Dream', but there is one billboard that scratches at the surface of this dream to reveal the darker side of life for some in America today. From the billboard above 20th Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan stare the faces of four women, almost daring passers-by to ignore them. In reality these women have been long ignored by society, as they are prisoners in the little known Bayview Correctional Facility, a minimum-security prison housed in the fashionable art district of Chelsea. But their presence has been brought to light in an exhibition and billboard project organised by Irishman Fergus McCaffrey, an independent curator at the Gagosian Gallery New York, in a collaboration between the Irish artist Brian Maguire and thirteen women prisoners. The Bayview Project is comprised of: an exhibition of Maguire's portraits of the thirteen women and twenty works by the inmates at White Box Gallery, an alternative, non-profit arts organisation based in Chelsea; a 20 x 60-foot billboard located at 20th Street and 10th Avenue; and a seminar discussing 'Penal Policy: New York State'.

Over a series of conversations between Maguire, McCaffrey and the directors of White Box, the idea of the artist working with the women of the Bayview correctional institute was born. Over a 17-month period Maguire lived in New York on and off, organising art workshops for the women prisoners. The artist encouraged and assisted the prisoners in making their own work based on the themes of self, the other, close relationships, social environments, related values, and possessions. At the same time, with the permission of the prisoners, he painted their portraits, subverting the traditional status of portraiture as a representation of achievement and social status. Instead for Maguire the workshops were not about rehabilitation - he saw painting as a way in which the women prisoners could re-discover their value and voice in an institutionalised environment and could re-assert their place and worth in a society that had seemingly forgotten them.

Brian Maguire : Untitled, 2001, acrylic on canvas, 76 x 51 cm; courtesy Gagosian Gallery

The large portraits Maguire produced are bold in brushstroke and colour, as well as subject matter. They have great depth and reveal through the faces of the women the many contradictory emotions of the prisoners Ð sadness, despair, hope, love, etc. The work which the prisoners produced reveal their longings and dreams of the past, present and future, images of the world and the people they have left behind and the hopes and dreams they have for the future. Some paintings depict the despair of the woman prisoners and the darker sides of life in America today. One darkly painted canvas reveals a man surrounded by the accessories of a life of crime - a gun, money, a bottle of gin, in the top right corner an eye weeps for a life lost to crime. In another painting a prisoner depicts a shadowy monster-like figure towering over a small lone child - a frightening and disturbing image. Despite their feelings of isolation and despair inside the prison, some of the women used the canvases to reveal their hopes and dreams, with one prisoner depicting the material things she aspired to own when she left prison and found a good job - Gucci bags, designer clothes, gold jewellery. Whilst another painted in bright positive colours the female members of her family all holding hands, their faces laughing and smiling from the canvas; above their heads hang musical notes signifying the musical ability of the women. Some canvases are filled with dream-like hopeful representations of the outside world - a glass greenhouse filled with vibrantly coloured tropical plants, the blue sky behind revealing a brilliant yellow sun bathing the whole painting in a warm glow. Of the inmates who exhibited at the White Box Gallery four have already been released and many are keen to continue their new-found passion for painting and involvement with the art world which brought them such hope and release while they were in prison.

Brian Maguire: Untitled, 2001, acrylic on canvas, 76 x 51 cm; courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Following controversy in March 2002, New York State raised doubts over the prisoners' participation in the exhibition, as the authorities objected to any prisoner making money from the sale of works while they were still in prison. From the beginning the Bayview Project had been conceived purely as an exhibition of Maguire's portraits and the workshop paintings by the women prisoners at White Box. However, intervention by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of White Box clarified the situation, making it possible for the exhibition to take place as planned, with none of the artwork for sale, by agreement with the Gallery and the correctional authorities. Instead the portraits remain the property of the women prisoners.

The Bayview Project was supported by the Robert Lehman Foundation; the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation; the Cultural Relations Committee of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, Ireland; the Milton & Sally Avery Foundation; and the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin.

Over the last fifteen years, Maguire has undertaken a series of projects in Europe and South America. Representing Ireland at the 1998 São Paolo Biennial, Maguire presented work arising from workshops in the notorious Carandoru State Prison. In Ireland over a twelve-year period he has developed a cross-disciplinary arts initiative in maximum-security prisons, which are linked to the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.

Katherine Thompson is a freelance art administrator and art historian.

Brian Maguire: Bayview Project, White Box Gallery, New York, December 2002

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