Since his emergence as an artist in Australia during the 1980s, Tim Maguire has worked in various ways to convey a refreshing philosophical scepticism.

Earlier paintings and prints featured monuments dissolving into their own reflections, vast landscapes blurring into mirage, often a use of trompe l’oeil  to undermine itself in works of art where illusionism met transparency, until finally there were the ‘flower paintings’, in the 1990s, when arguably Maguire hit his stride.

These still-lifes provided an aesthetic means for the celebration of beauty and an acknowledgement of inevitable corruption and relativity. His later abstract paintings similarly, paradoxically, push and pull the viewer between what is imagined and what is real.

Comprising digital prints and video of snow, water and flowers, this exhibition marks a significant development in Maguire’s artistic practice; the ephemerality of his subject matter is very familiar, but the new medium adds new meanings.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Tim Maguire: Snow, Water and Flowers at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 30 January – 24 March 2008.