Artist Brendan’s lucky escape – for second time

IT’S second time around for Brendan McGuire. Just over four years ago the art works for his degree show were caught up in the first fire, although miraculously remained untouched, apart from a few sooty fingerprints. This time, just days away from his masters show, he is looking at the billowing smoke and the firemen on turntable ladders pouring water on the ruined art school building. He had taken the precaution, however, of storing his work safely.

“I did sculpture for my degree,” he recalls, “and the centrepiece was a burned-out building which in retrospect was spookily prescient. In surrounding rooms everything had been burned out but where my stuff was everything was OK. When the firefighters came into the studio they just couldn’t figure out how come there was one piece, mine, that had got burned and everything else was untouched. I’ve still got it at home.”

He lives in Garnethill, just a hose length away from the Art School, and he is having to take a long route home to skirt the barriers and the police officers keeping the public away from the periphery of the fire site.

“This fire on Friday happened on the day this year’s crop of students graduated, almost four years to the day after the last one. I asked the manager of the school estate if he knew what happened and he said he did, but he couldn’t say,” the 34-year-old said. “As far as I understand there were security guards onsite and they gave the alarm. I don’t know if there were sprinklers but I know there were prior to the last fire and they switched them off because they were frightened they’d damage the exhibits.”

He added: “I’ve been told all the floors are gone and the building is buckling. It’s a tragedy but this time I don’t think the ‘Mack’ is coming back.”