About
Sarah is an Irish visual artist living in England. Her work includes painting, installation, poetry, sculpture, performance and film and an interest in psychology. Meaning-making and expressive creativity through the Arts has been a solace to Sarah all her adult life.
At the heart of Strong's interdisciplinary practice is an intention to express the interplay between inner and outer states of being and the tensions between body, mind, soul and psyche. Her artwork is informed by her own psychological and somatic journey and is predominantly an interior process.
Sarah was born in 1949 to an Irish Catholic mother and an English Protestant father and grew up in a commune in County Dublin where her father, the psychoanalyst, Rupert Strong, (1911-1984) established a pioneering community from 1949-66. Her mother was the Irish writer Eithne Strong, (1923-1999).
My Education In The Arts
• University of the Arts London Byam Shaw School of Fine Art:
2004-2005 Foundation in Fine Art. Level 3 Diploma in Foundation Studies Art & Design, Merit (2005).
• University of the Arts London Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design:
2005-2006, Fine Art B.A. course.
• City Literary Institute:
1996-1997 part time Sculpture and Woodcarving.
• City Literary Institute:
1994-1995 part time Foundation in Drawing.
• The Architectural Association School of Architecture, London:
1974-1976
1971-1973
• Awarded The Architectural Association Diploma in Architecture (a two year programme of advanced degree level study) with exemption from Part 2 of Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), (1976).
• Awarded The Architectural Association Intermediate Diploma in Architecture (a three year degree level programme of study) with exemption from Part 1 of Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) (1973).
• Hammersmith College of Art and Design:
1970-1971, Interior Design.
Selected Exhibitions
Caoin - Lament
London Irish Women's Centre, December, 2011.
These handkerchiefs belonged to my mother and I kept them safe for many years.
In the process of making this stained glass heart, I placed an alive shamrock between the panes, in an attempt to integrate my Irish and English bloodlines.
The Rian Art Project
The London Irish Women's Centre: facilitated by Sarah Strong (Jan – Feb. 2012).
My intention for this project was to use artwork as a bridge between subtle memory or Rian (the Irish word for imprint, mark, trace) and to combine it with visual self-expression. Over six weeks, a group of women worked with collage, paint, cloth, and memorabilia exploring words such as: "leaving, loss, longing, inclusion, exclusion, homesick". The most common feeling-word that arose was "Belonging", as in the need to belong. This workshop arose directly from themes encountered in the ARHC funded 'Women and Exile in Irish Literature and Culture' group facilitated by Dr Ellen McWilliams'. See 'New Perspectives on Women and the Irish Diaspora' conference, Bath Spa University, March, 2012. womenandexileseminarseries.wordpress.com
Mothers and Daughters
"Mind Yourself," Islington, London, 2013.
Twelve Irish women living in the UK gave me photographs of themselves with their mother. I called this project, The Sentient Handkerchief / An Naipcin Poca Mothuchan. I used the hemmed square of linen as a symbol of feeling and containment and to represent the raw place in the Irish psyche around migration.
Film
Title borrowed from "The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks,"
by Paula Meehan, 1984, published by Daedalus Press 1991.
"I Hear Fish Drowning" a film by Sarah Strong
Directed by John Hodge and Sarah Strong
Executive Producer: Luke Campbell
Contact: luke.campbell@mac.com
John Hodge and Sarah Strong
Writing with Light: Reflections on Sarah Strong's I Hear Fish Drowning (2014) Paula Quigley
Trinity College Dublin
Screening Events and Film Festivals where IHFD shown:
(also see: paulowniapictures.com)
• Boston College Ireland Dublin, A hybrid symposium on the work of Eithne & Sarah Strong, November 2023.
• New Narrative Poetry with Martina Evans, Duke of Wellington Pub, Dalston. July 2017.
• University of Liverpool in London, 'The Irish Language': A day of literature, film and song with Professor Lance Pettit and Irish historian & poet, Sean Hutton. January 2017.
• Waterstones Basement, Tottenham Court Road. "The City Lit. Talks Back," with Conor Montague, April, 2016.
• London Metropolitan University. "Irish Writers in London: Summer School." July, 2015.
• Maynooth University, Ireland. 'Motherhood and Culture,' conference. As part of the Bloomsday Panel, June 2015.
• Irish Film Group. Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith: 'Looking at Irish film and The Irish in film.' with Professor Lance Pettit, November 2014.
• Indiecork Film Festival: The Gate Cinema, Old High Street, Cork, Ireland, October 2014.
• Portobello Film Festival. Debut screening @ KHP Pub, Upstairs theatre bar, 139 Ladbrook Grove, London, September, 2014.
• Merriman Summer School, Irish premiere of IHFD, The Glor Theatre, Ennis, Co. Clare, Ireland. 'Emotional Life in Ireland' Conference, August, 2014
• The Oxford, Kentish Town Road, London NW5, Private Event, June, 2014.
Irish debut showing of I Hear Fish Drowning at The Glor theatre, Ennis, Co. Clare, August 2014.
The Cumann Merriman Summer School 2014
merriman.ie/en/samradh/2014s
Poetry
Published poems by Sarah Strong
• Exhibition catalogue: 'Washing Soot off Stained Glass', published by Boston College and National University of Ireland Maynooth, 2023.
• Washing Windows 1V Irish Women Write Poetry, Arlen House 2024, WW 111 2023, WW Too 2022, Washing Windows?, Irish Women Write Poetry, 2017.
• Women A Cultural Review: Imagining Motherhood in the 21st Century.Vol. 29, Number 1. Spring 2018 and Hardback edition published by Routledge, 2020.
• Baroque Delights of Many Layered Petticoats anthology. Salmon Poetry, 2018.
• SOUTHWORD Journal. Issue 31. 2017.
• Silver Streams: Journal of Modern and Postmodern Literature, Visual Arts and Academic Essays. Issue 1. 2017.
• SOUTH. Issue 56. 2017.
• South Bank Poetry anthology . Issue 27. 2017.
• Prodding the Pelt anthology. Salmon Poetry. 2017.
• Door to Door: "Euston," published Anon, July, 2017.
• londongrip.co.uk the international on-line cultural magazine published my poem: "Leaving Home". 2017.
• The Cannon's Mouth. Issue 60, 2016.
Billy's Room
Lexicon Theatre, Dun-Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, May 2024.
Pádraig Pearse Library, Dublin.
Links
'Freud in Dublin? The Formation of Psychoanalysis in Ireland, c. 1928-1993,' Professor Fergus Campbell, Oxford University Press, April 2023.
History Psychoanalysis in Ireland
The Irish Times - 28/2/2023
IASIL Conference 2024, Gakushuin University, Tokyo, Japan
Universidade de São Paulo, W.B. Yeats Chair of Irish Studies, March 2024
Artwork Publications
• An artwork by Sarah Strong appears in: 'Resting Places, On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution' by Ellen McWilliams, 2023, www.beyondthepalebooks.com
• 'Imagining Motherhood in the Twenty-First Century in Women, A Cultural Review': Special Issue, Spring (2018) Vol.29, No.1, Valerie Heffernan & Gay Wilgus. Hardback and Kindle editions (2020) published by Routledge. Paperback edition, Routledge 2023, available on Amazon.
• Conference Booklet: 'New Perspectives on Women and the Irish Diaspora', March 2012, Bath Spa University.
Contact
For inquiries, please get in touch:
sarahstella.strong@gmail.com