Roisin O’Rourke

Róisín O'Rourke's work explores how shame, repression, and generational trauma become embedded within the body and carried through Irish social and religious history. Having grown up within Irish Catholic culture, her practice is shaped by personal experiences of religious influence alongside broader histories of bodily control, silence, and guilt.

Through performance and installation, she investigates themes surrounding Catholic ideology, femininity, bodily surveillance, and inherited shame. In this work, chains made from lamb bones speak to sacrifice, purity and the weight of inherited guilt, materials that carry both domestic and religious resonance.

Her practice is informed by repetitive processes and labour intensive making, drawing connections between domestic labour, and the physical experience of the body. While rooted in historical systems of control, the work also examines how these pressures persist in contemporary society through social expectations, online scrutiny, and the policing of women's bodies.