“I’ve seen the future, and I’m not going.”

– David McDermott 

As visual artists, David McDermott and Peter McGough are contemporary artists known for their works in painting, photography, sculpture and film.

They currently split their time between Dublin and NewYork City. In the timeless approach that remains the basis of their work, the artists have, since 2006, drawn from the powerful narrative and dramatic imagery from the Hollywood Movies of the 1940s to the 1960s. This «melodramatic» genre was based on the exaggeration or even the excess of emotion and reached its highest (and lowest) point in post-war Hollywood. 

The new paintings exhibited here focus on the strongest moment of the plot. They are «a celebration of retro style». We feel we are in front of sudden illuminations. The moments chosen here by McDermott & McGough are indeed of great narrative importance and are all, without exception, key moments of the plot. 

McDermott & McGough’s work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions at such institutions as Cheim & Read, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Pat Hearn Gallery, Massimo Audiello Gallery, Galleria Gian Enzo Sperone, Sperone Westwater, Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, and also in public institutions such as Frankfurter Kunstverein,Whitney Museum of American Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Centre Pompidou, Kunsthalle Wien, Manezh Moscow and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. 

Previous exhibitions also include the Whitney Biennial, New York, in 1987, 1991 and 1995. McDermott & McGough mounted a mid-career retrospective at the Provincial Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Oostende, Belgium.