TO JUDGE by the title of this exhibition, The Body Politic, Brian Maguire has a certain underlying programme or theme in mind, and an introductory note (not in the catalogue) enhances this impression.

Images of incipient violence and unrest are strongly felt and - Pawn Shop Wall states this overtly by depicting a row of guns, such as you might see in, some shop in the American West. America, in fact, is very much in the foreground, though when we speak facilely and automatically of "American violence" we might remember what our own image in the world is at present.

It's a Small World, which is hung in isolation on the end wall, shows Maguire at his best and most characteristic, and proves him once again to be a strong presence in the New Image painting of the 1980s. As so often in his work, it is built up largely of curved, almost cellular shapes from which faces, figures and other imagery loom suggestively and almost threateningly. And formally it hangs wholly together, all of a piece.

Which is not always true of the other ambitious works, notably the large American Landscape which suggests a kind of aggregate or superimposition of impressions dreams and imaginings, perhaps the outcome of long drives through the wide spaces and long roads of the US. In parts it is excellent, as a unit it somehow sags mainly, I think, because there is some central void or hollow in the overall composition.

The works on paper in the office or anteroom of the gallery should not be missed or overlooked they contain some of the most direct, unified and hard hitting things in the entire exhibition. Like Graham, Mulcahy and others of his generation, Maguire appears to be a painter who needs to catch fire spontaneously, through a genuine sense of personal involvement, rather than a purveyor of the well made picture. Of his gut energy there can be no doubt, and lie is one of the strongest and most individual personalities of his generation in this country.