Guggi: 'The brain bleed gave me a sense I've so much more work to do'
Guggi currently has an exhibition at the Kerlin in Dublin. Picture: Gabriella Janni
Guggi In the spring of 2021, the Dublin artist Guggi had a close brush with death, undergoing a four-and-a-half-hour operation in Beaumont Hospital to counteract the effects of a bleed on his brain.
“I’ve done some crazy things in my life,” he says. “I’ve had motorbike accidents and so on, but the brain bleed was different; it gave me a sense that I have so much more work to do.”
He attributes his survival to his faith. “I don’t consider myself a Catholic or a Protestant. I’m not interested in that kind of branding, but I do have a belief in God.”
Death has touched Guggi in other ways too. In the past few years, he lost both his parents, Robert and Winnie Rowen, and his new exhibition - of paintings, sculptures, and works in mixed media - at the Kerlin Gallery in Dublin is titled 'Them' in their memory.
“I was 63 when my father died in 2022, and I only lost my mother last year,” he says. “So I had them for a long time. I still feel my mother’s presence, in particular; it feels like she’s not that far away at all. I had done a fair number of the paintings for this show when I realised how much of my parents are in them. More are inspired by my childhood. So yeah, they’re very autobiographical.”
Guggi was one of a family of ten children that his best friend Bono once described as “an Old Testament tribe.”
For years, until he chose to devote himself full-time to painting in 1986, he performed in the art rock outfit the Virgin Prunes with another close neighbour, Gavin Friday. All three grew up on the same street in Ballymun, immortalised by U2 on their 2014 album Songs of Innocence; the eighth track, dedicated to Guggi, is called Cedarwood Road.
Guggi has fond memories of his childhood. “My father was difficult,” he says. “But he also had a side to him that could be kind and sweet. When we were kids, he had a great sense of adventure. He’d let us ride motorbikes, and when he bought a boat, he’d take us out sailing in Malahide. He also gave me my faith, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that.”
Winnie, he remembers, “encouraged all of us, in everything we did. She never had a bad word to say to any of us. She always encouraged my drawing and painting, but if I’d chosen to be a roadsweeper – which is a much harder job than what I do – she would have encouraged me in that as well.”
The elder Rowens spent their latter years in Robertstown, Co Meath, where Robert collected vehicles. “Motorbikes, trucks, vans. He loved anything on wheels,” says Guggi. “We counted fourteen cars rusting away outside the house, some of them to the point where they were falling apart. He would never get rid of them. But there was a certain beauty to that, and I went out and photographed them after he died. Then I mounted the photographs and started applying paint to them. I’d done about six of these when it occurred to me that what I was really doing was collaborating with my father.”
In Guggi’s hands, the photographs of rusting vehicles are reinvented as bowls and vessels, familiar motifs in his work over many years. The same shapes occur in a number of paintings in the show, such as For Winnie, Foot of the Cross, and Rememory, while his sculptures take the form of a series of whitewashed urns. Since his brain bleed, he has noticed a change come over his paintings. “I’m using more colour,” he says, “and I think I see things a little differently as well.”
Them is Guggi’s first show at the Kerlin since 2019. Over the years, however, he has also shown in major cities such as London, Paris, Monaco, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Buenos Aires. “Last year, I had the biggest show I’ve ever done, at Chateau la Coste in the South of France. There are different exhibition spaces there, but I had my eye on the largest, where the ceilings are six metres high. I felt I could rise to the challenge. The show ran from August to September, and was a great success.”
Guggi is already preparing a new suite of paintings for a group show in London. These days, he works in the studio in the home in Killiney he shares with his partner, the photographer Gabriella Janni. “I’m lucky that Gabriella has taken on so much of my administration,” he says. “It frees me up to spend more time painting.”
Given his closeness to Bono, it’s no surprise that he took time off to attend two of U2’s concerts at the Sphere in Las Vegas. “I couldn’t get out for the opening night,” he says, “I just had too much on. But I did catch those two shows before Christmas, and I hope to catch two more with Gabriella in February. The show is based around the Achtung Baby album, but it’s basically a different set every night.”
Surely the song Cedarwood Road has featured? “No, now that you mention it,” he laughs. “Actually, I may not bother going back after all.”
