Lon Gallery - 1st April - 25th April 2026
Installation view
A spare show of six paintings and a small sculpture of a pipe are judiciously placed in the modest store-front gallery. The show is a departure in a number of ways, following the tightly themed figures of his 2024 show with Lon, ‘Social Studies’. The organising principle for the current show is basically illustrations to the Irish folk song, ‘Seven Drunken Nights’, the lyrics of which are reproduced for each work below.
With a name like McMonagle, there is presumably an Irish heritage at play in choice of song, indeed, a loop of tin whistle playing, accompanying the sculpture, is also the work of the artist.
‘Tin Whistle’ (2026) Epoxy clay, silver leaf, pigment, pipe tobacco incense, Bluetooth speaker, recording of the artist playing a tin whistle.
And as I went home on Wednesday night as drunk as drunk could be
I saw a pipe upon the chair where my old pipe should be
Well, I called me wife and I said to her, "Will you kindly tell to me
Who owns that pipe upon the chair where my old pipe should be?"
“Ah, you're drunk
You're drunk, you silly old fool
Still you can not see
That's a lovely tin whistle that me mother sent to me”.
Well, it's many a day I've travelled a hundred miles or more
But tobacco in a tin whistle sure I never saw before.
There is of course, a good deal more than genial lying over infidelities prompting the artist’s illustrations. For a start, there is the droll play on Magritte’s famous denial of a pipe (‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’), here, mischievously insisting it is actually a tin whistle. And it is the chain of allusions to ostensible subject matter that have been at the core of the artist’s practice and undermine notions of a straightforward ‘illustration’. Allegory or metaphorical meaning is sometimes held to be the true function of painting in an age where mere observation of appearances is dominated by photography.
But McMonagle’s practice is not simply concerned with the felicities of extended reference. The work’s true signature lies in the priority assigned drawing, and line in particular. Tone or volume modelling dwindle in his style, which concentrates on an elegant armature of arabesques. This too urges a non-literal reading of subject matter, but at a deeper level announces a project for painting.
‘Horse’ (2026) 153 X 153 cm oil on canvas
Oh, as I went home on Monday night as drunk as drunk could be
I saw a horse outside the door where my old horse should be
Well, I called me wife and I said to her, "Will you kindly tell to me
Who owns that horse outside the door where my old horse should be?"
“Ah, you're drunk
You're drunk, you silly old fool
Still you cannot see
That's a lovely sow that me mother sent to me”.
Well, it's many a day I've travelled a hundred miles or more
But a saddle on a sow, sure I never saw before.
Pigs have a special appeal for the artist, quite apart from the song. Their connotations as untidy or greedy sit beneath a general enthusiasm for picturing the animal world, wild and domestic, throughout his career. It is notable that while interactions between figures is rare in the artist’s work, scenes of figures holding or beside animals are common. The artist is aware of this, but uninclined to dwell upon the implications of sympathy or rapport sought among beasts rather than people.
‘Horse’ also displays a number of key traits common to the artist’s style, from the vignetted corners of the picture, where they fade to white, to the frontal perspective, with the circumscribed patch of ground beneath the pig, to the emphatic curves to the foreground and the heavily impasto treatment of either areas of volume or background. The impasto is both the most obvious trait and perhaps the most puzzling. Given the preference for line, as a foundation, other aspects of the subject simply open the door to painting technique devoid of line. In McMonagle’s case, this amounts to heavy drags of a spatula or other broad tool, as a kind of counterpoint to elegant outline. It becomes a dichotomy. And underlines painting as an equation between line and tone.
Taken in combination with the other traits, the effect is to flatten the image, resist more elaborate distance or depth, not in a misguided faith in the priority of ‘the picture plane’, but in an attempt to open the subject up to more remote and subtle reference.
‘Blanket’ (2026) 102 X 102 cm oil on canvas
And as I went home on Tuesday night as drunk as drunk could be
I saw a coat behind the door where my old coat should be
Well, I called me wife and I said to her, "Will you kindly tell to me
Who owns that coat behind the door where my old coat should be?"
“Ah, you're drunk
You're drunk, you silly old fool
Still you cannot see
That's a woollen blanket that me mother sent to me”.
Well, it's many a day I've travelled a hundred miles or more
But buttons in a blanket sure I never saw before.
‘Blanket’ adds a domestic element of apparel to the artist’s work. Domesticity is usually reserved for fancy cakes and teapots, subjects that have recurred throughout his career. The addition of an ear is puzzling, since there is no mention of listening in the song’s lyrics, but possibly the sense of eavesdropping added to the suspicion of the supposedly gullible drunk. The image of an empty jacket also carries with it a theme of identity or role, of a mode of conduct convenient but detached.
The jacket is infact a familiar item to the artist’s wardrobe and Facebook followers will remember him wearing it to the 2019 Bayside Art Prize.
Artist wearing famous jacket beside painting of a pig (courtesy of Facebook)
‘Boots’ (2026) 66 X 66 cm oil on canvas
And as I went home on Thursday night as drunk as drunk could be
I saw two boots beneath the bed where my old boots should be
Well, I called me wife and I said to her, "Will you kindly tell to me
Who owns that boots beneath the bed where my old boots should be?"
Ah, you're drunk
You're drunk, you silly old fool
Still you can not see
They're two lovely Geranium pots me mother sent to me
Well, it's many a day I've travelled a hundred miles or more
But laces in Geranium pots I never saw before.
‘Boots’ is a good example of the frontality and impasto treatment accorded volume to subjects such as flower pots. Surprisingly, the geraniums are rendered more or less realistically, rather than with additional linear flourish, but this is a small, intimate work, and the artist’s full, bravura drawing is reserved for larger areas.
‘With you in the bed’ (2026) 102 X 102 cm oil on canvas
And as I went home on Friday night as drunk as drunk could be
I saw a head upon the bed where my old head should be
Well, I called me wife and I said to her, "Will you kindly tell to me
Who owns that head up on the bed where my old head should be?"
“Ah, you're drunk
You're drunk, you silly old fool
Still you cannot see
That's a baby boy that me mother sent to me”.
Well, it's many a day I've travelled a hundred miles or more
But a baby boy with his whiskers on sure I never saw before.
‘With you in the bed’ is unusual for offering a picture of two figures interacting, and for the rest of their figures to extend beyond the frame, rather than as an isolated motif and for brilliant ultramarine hues. In general, the artist is a very dour colourist, again avoiding any competition with his drawing. The combination of vivid colour and part-framed figures makes the work, while faithful in illustrating the song lyrics, quite atypical.
While the song lyrics are usually confined to just five verses, avoiding the bawdier last two verses, McMonagle nevertheless provides seven pictures, as if to compensate for the censorship. Yet his additions, ‘Tax Man’ and ‘Carrot’ are hardly salacious.
‘Tax Man’ (2026) 137 X 137 cm oil on canvas
‘Tax Man’ reprises some of the fashion caricature of the 2024 ‘Social Studies’ show, the face, intended to be female, underneath a fake moustache, the blots upon her cheekbones, suggesting almost a second set of eyes or a mask, again echoing issues of identity and concealment that run throughout his career. Images of disfigurement or accident most famously occur in his portrait of Michael Buxton, a finalist in The Archibald Prize in 2012.
'Michael Buxton' (2012) 168 X 168 cm oil on canvas [NOT IN SHOW]
More recently these occur in ‘Nobody’s Business’ (2022) where a jockey, spattered with a wet racetrack is interestingly matched with a piebald horse of a different spatter.
‘Nobody’s Business’ (2022) 167 X 167 cm oil on canvas [NOT IN SHOW]
The final work, another small still life, ‘Carrot’, might carry some sexual connotation, but at a safe distance. In the Wikipedia notes to censored verses six and seven, there is mention of a version involving a carrot, upon which the drunkard remarks he has never seen a carrot with a foreskin (elsewhere, condom). But this is not strictly in the available song lyrics, nor is the carrot pictured somewhere in the marital bed. Illustration runs thinly here, but the artist is able to quietly render a small carrot in a stylish glass with refraction, significantly, and to address the task of illustrating Seven Drunken Nights, suitably obliquely, injecting an element of doubt and dissonance, stinging nettles to the story.
‘Carrot’ (2026) 36 X 36 cm oil on canvas
IMAGES COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LON GALLERY
Thanks to both for help in preparing this review
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