Ajax at Manuka Gully

Homer’s Iliad (dated c700 BC) is driven by the desires and whims of its lead characters, and tells how their individual actions influenced the course of the Trojan War. In her suite of etchings, Southern Myths, Marian Maguire focuses on the personal struggles of two of the Achaean (Greek) warriors: Achilles, considered their greatest fighter, and his cousin Ajax. In this first etching she characterises Ajax as a man at one with himself; he is confident and self-contained.

A master printer, Marian Maguire (born 1962) trained at the University of Canterbury, furthering her studies in the United States. Since 1996 she has run Papergraphica, a printmaking studio in Christchurch that specialises in making limited edition prints by New Zealand artists. (Southern Myths, 2005)

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