Fintan's Corner
Artist of the Month – Roisin White
Apr
By: Philomena Barry
Roisin White is a Dublin based visual artist. Her work is multidisciplinary, working primarily with photography, drawing and sculpture. Her work often draws from archival materials, be it ephemeral “junk” or twentieth century found photography. Roisin feels she has a responsibility to the irreplaceable imagery found at flea markets and on the streets, to repurpose it and give it new importance. Her most recent bodies of work have stemmed from both found objects and imagery.
In Search of a Previous Line is a body of work that explores the connection between the experience of contemporary women who are climbers, with that of the Irish mountaineer, author, and photographer Elizabeth le Blond in the late nineteenth century. The project revisits and represents le Blond’s stories and photographs through the artists’ personal experiences in mountaineering and climbing.
Lay Her Down Upon Her Back, which launched at The Library Project in Dublin in August 2018, is a body of work that examines the legacy of the 1880s treatment known as The Rest Cure. It was generally prescribed to women who were deemed to be of nervous disposition, anemic, or hysterical, and involved them spending up to two months on bed rest, over-feeding, isolation and electrocution.
Roisin’s piece “(Mother) Daughter” is one of the works featured in [Untitled] Landscape, a travelling exhibition which was on display in the Luan Gallery from February 15th until April 7th 2019. Her piece is an exploration of the relationship between mother and daughter, how they are inherently connected and how the relationship changes, grows, dwindles and is internalised.
Roisin was a finalist in the Inspirational Arts Photographic Award in 2015.
She has worked curatorially for CEAD at NCAD, and in 2016 she was part of the Young Curators Project in Rua Red, where she curated an exhibition of emerging Irish artists entitled “Not Necessarily Naughty.”
In 2017 she was selected to take part in the How to Flatten a Mountain residency at Cow House Studios in Co Wexford. The residency culminated in an exhibition in Rathfarnham Castle as part of the Photo Ireland Festival.
Roisin has exhibited her work in Ireland, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Croatia.
I interviewed Roisin by phone just before [Untitled Landscape] launched in Athlone. Click below if you’d like to listen to that interview.
