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Dragana Jurišić, Paula Meehan, 2018, photographic print

Conor Tallon and Curator Michael Waldron take a closer look at one of The Crawford's most recent acquisitions for this WORK OF THE WEEK!

A spectre, an echo, a memory… this photographic portrait by Dragana Jurišić is as multi-layered as its subject. Captured in mid-speech with multiple frames overlaid, the poet Paula Meehan is dynamically presented to the viewer, perhaps recalling or conjuring a deep past, her gestures like an incantation.

As the artist herself says, the portrait “is from our book Museum (2019), which is an ode to the history of, and the lives lived in, 14 Henrietta Street, Dublin’s museum of social history.” Both invited to the project by Dublin City Council, this unique collaboration draws together Jurišić’s haunting imagery with a new poetry sequence by Meehan.

Born in Dublin, Paula Meehan is a renowned Irish poet, playwright, author of “The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks” (1991) and contributor to The Great Book of Ireland / Leabhar Mór na hÉireann. In 2013, she became the sixth Ireland Professor of Poetry.

Dragana Jurišić was born in Slavonski Brod, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), but lives and works in Dublin. She makes deeply personal work that explores the power photography has over memory. “Working primarily with image, text and video installation,” she reflects, “my work interrogates issues of gender, stereotyping, identity, and the effects of exile and displacement on memory.” The artist’s empowering 100 Muses (2015) was previously exhibited in NAKED TRUTH: The Nude in Irish Art (2018).

Paula Meehan (2018) by Dragana Jurišić was shortlisted for the Zurich Portrait Prize 2019 and now hangs as part of the collection on our Gibson Landing (Floor 1).

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The Angel of the Annunciation (1953) by Patrick Hennessy is at once simple and complex. The composition of two seemingly religious sculptures on the shore, against a backdrop of a glistening sea and clouded sky, may appear straightforward. However, when we question why these figures are placed here, who they represent, and what their relationship is to one another, then things become less clear.

A clue may be found in the title of the work, which suggests the winged figure to be the Archangel Gabriel, the messenger who reputedly announced the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. To follow this thought, we would expect the figure in the distance to be the Virgin Mary, but instead we find an androgynous sculptural form in French Gothic style.

One interpretation suggests that the subject may be taken from the Book of Revelation, in which Christ meets Gabriel, and thus the painting may relate to the beginning and the end (apocalypse). More likely is that, as relics of a previous order these out-of-place statues have lost their power, and as Seán Kissane suggests, are “irrelevant in a modern world.”

This startling, yet cryptic painting may also be rooted in the artist’s Catholic upbringing. Cork-born artist Patrick Hennessy (1915-1980) grew up in Scotland, but later returned to Ireland where he lived with his partner, and fellow artist, Henry Robertson Craig. Navigating a markedly conservative society as a gay man, Hennessy often encoded, consciously or otherwise, homosexual identity in his work and the tensions that arise between the public and authentic self.

As such, we would like to celebrate Cork Pride Festival (19-25 October) with this online contribution to the history of Irish LGBT+ culture.

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Elmare mawe spoke to writer and director Marion Wyatt about plans to reschedule her production of Katty Barry Queen of the Coal Quay at the Cork Arts Theatre..The first, new, professional production to grace a Cork stage since March 2020

Katty Barry, Queen of The Coal Quay is a new play, with music, from the creator of

Dockers, Shawlies, When We Were Young and The Sunbeam Girls. The play is a work of fiction based on anecdotes, memories and folklore.

This new play, with music, composed by Jimmy Brockie, celebrates the life and times of  Katty Barry. The play was written with the support of Miss Barry’s family.

Katty Barry, who was a legend in her own time, ran an eating house in Dalton’s Avenue,

just off Cornmarket Street. Katty Barry's was frequented by peers and paupers alike, and all were treated the same,with nightly songs and stories. Katty Barry served alcohol, often late at night, despite having no licence, and being repeatedly fined.

The Cork Examiner described Katty Barry as the personification

"of a people and a culture peculiar to a particularly colourful and indigenously Cork milieu",

presiding over bohemian Cork life until the closure of her establishment by the late sixties.

The Irish Times stated that Katty Barry remained

"elegant, observant, highly intelligent, with a devilish twinkle in her eye

and the ability to cut people down to size."

Cast

Rachel O’Connell, Angela Newman, Pearse O’Donoghue, Judy Donovan and Jimmy Brockie.

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