Róisín White is a visual artist based in Dublin, working primarily with photography, while incorporating drawing, sculpture, and collage into her practice. Róisín holds a BA(hons) in Photography from DIT, and certificates in Ceramics and Sculpture from NCAD.
Róisín White’s work draws from archival materials. She has an interest in exploring lore and the fictional narrative that can be discovered in discarded imagery, previous understandings agitated, and new meanings drawn out. Roisin’s sculptural work brings her photographic work into the three-dimensional and builds on means of photographic reception.
White has exhibited her work in Ireland and across Europe, with her debut solo exhibition at The Library Project in August 2018. She was selected to represent PhotoIreland at Futures Photography platform, and was selected from an international open call to take part in Parallel European Photography Platform in 2018/9. Her project “Lay Her Down Upon Her Back” was selected for the third edition of New Irish Works in 2019. White was selected to take part in residency programmes, How To Flatten A Mountain residency at Cow House Studios in 2017, In-Between Shores residency with Ardesia Projects and JEST Gallery in Italy in June 2018, and Cow House Studios in February 2019.
Recent exhibitions include “I See Crimson I See Red” at Elizabth Fort in Cork City, supported by Tactic Studios and Cork City Council, in January 2019. White will have a solo exhibition as part of her residency at The Darkroom in Stoneybatter in April 2019. Róisín has recently been granted the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council Emerging Artist Grant to put towards a new body of work.
LAY HER DOWN UPON HER BACK
This 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, aneamic, or hysterical, and involved them spending up to two months on bed rest, over-feeding, isolation and electrocution. This treatment has since been discredited, but its legacy in women’s healthcare remains today. The Rest Cure cultivated mistrust in women’s pain and discomfort, and made the female patient solely dependent on her male doctor. The method in which the Rest Cure was administered solidified power relations between doctor and patient and ensured that she would be submissive to her treatment.
“And here lies the trouble: there are women who mimic fatigue, who indulge themselves in rest on the least pretence, who have no symptoms so truly honest that we need care regard them. These are they who spoil their own nervous systems as they spoil their children, when they have them, by yielding to the least desire and teaching them to dwell on little pains.”
(Weir Mitchell, S. 1877).
The lasting effect can be seen in the mistreatment and mistrust of women by physicians today, with the average time for a diagnosis of endometriosis at 7 years. We see this through how women’s pain is undermined and the repeated injustices we see affecting women’s bodies and women’s treatment, with most women being told to get some rest, lie down, grin and bear it. White uses a combination of found and contemporary imagery, drawings and paper samples, to weave a visceral story female struggle, pain, and misunderstanding. She draws inspiration from the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the history of Charcot’s Hysteria patients in 1860’s Paris, and the slow poisoning (and madness) of the wealthy families who lived with the colourful wallpapers who’s pigments were infused with arsenic. All of these elements, among many others, have informed this body of work, hoping to shed light on this history that has informed many practices today.