Mayo islander shares the story behind his striking series of paintings

Film art director and creator of ‘Spoken State’, Gary McGinty, says growing up on Achill Island has had a massive influence on how he sees the world.

“My life changed when I was ten years old, and a neighbour arrived with a set of watercolour paints and said, ‘I think you need these more than I do.’ I’ve been painting ever since,” the 57-year-old says.

After graduating in architecture, McGinty told The Mayo News he and his friends were presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“When I finished the course, a couple of friends and I booked to go to Hong Kong. A friend of ours received a call two weeks before we were to go, asking if we wanted to work on a film.”

The job involved designing and drawing up sets - a chance that meant abandoning their travel plans.

“We rationalised that you could go to Hong Kong any time, but you weren’t going to get an opportunity to work on a film every day,” he says.

That decision led to a career spanning more than 25 years in the film industry, where McGinty has worked as an art director on major productions including ‘Foundation’ for Apple TV, ‘Disenchanted’ for Disney, and ‘Wednesday’ for Netflix.

Despite his success in film, McGinty has continued to move between large-scale productions and his own personal artistic practice, most recently producing a striking new body of work titled ‘Spoken State’.

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Developing ‘Spoken State’

McGinty created his first ‘Spoken State’ piece in 2003 and has continued to devote himself to this evolving body of work ever since, working from his home studio in Rathmines, Dublin.

The collection features a series of national flags constructed from the text of some of the most iconic speeches in history. However, this idea took shape long before McGinty had picked up a brush.

“When we were growing up, like most houses in the West of Ireland, we had a picture of the Pope and John F Kennedy in the house. I always thought it was strange,” he says.

The image stayed with him, and as his artistic style began to gravitate towards text, the concept for ‘Spoken State’ began to emerge.

“I basically came up with the idea of layering,” he explains. “I layered a John F Kennedy speech over an American flag. From a distance, it reads as a flag, but up close you begin to see the lines of text.”

Working on aluminium, McGinty sands the surface before applying two or three layers of gesso, building up the texture that defines the finished pieces.

Using his trusty T-Square, McGinty creates perfect lines on which he puts the text.

“I kind of work out beforehand the amount of text that goes on the various lines. Getting the text to fit exactly is super tricky,” he says.

Picking the speeches

So, how are the speeches picked?

“They kind of pick themselves,” he says simply. “Over time, the meaning of historic speeches evolves.”

He points to the Irish 1916 Proclamation as a key influence.

“When I was growing up, there was always a picture of the Proclamation on the classroom wall, so that stayed with me.”

Other works draw on speeches such as Gandhi’s ‘Do or Die’, originally a call for Indian independence but now widely seen as a symbol of non-violent resistance, and Volodymyr Zelensky’s ‘We are Here’, which has become an immediate emblem of defiance.

“In times of crisis, we can return to these words to see what they can still teach us,” he adds

Interpretation

McGinty says he hopes his collection will reconnect people with flags and start a new conversation about them.

“People’s interpretation of the flag has actually changed over that period, and in five or ten years time, the interpretation will be different again,” he says.

“I know people are going to interpret them differently all the time, so that’s what keeps the project super alive and interesting.”

Unveiling the work

The artwork was unveiled at Art Evolve, a major contemporary fair, which made its return to Dublin’s RDS from Friday, March 27 to Sunday, March 29. Members of the Contemporary Art Gallery Association (CAGA) joined forces with other established galleries and individual artists to showcase the best of the Irish art scene.

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To view some of Gary McGinty’s work, you can visit his Instagram account, www.instagram.com/garymcginty/ or on his website garymcginty.com.

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