The Arts House

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).