Róisín Pierce

Róisín Pierce studied Textiles at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, graduating with a BA in 2016. She is based in Dublin, and her practice involves an examination and continual exploration of fabric sculptures created by manipulating and altering the raw materials she begins with.

There is a constant dialogue in the making and the unexpected that can occur in her work, allowing her to exploit the ‘language’ and techniques of the traditional and the contemporary. Her process in shape-making, form building, and repetition allows for new hand-made surfaces that explore the relationship of textiles to the body, seeing embellishment in the broadest sculptural terms. Through these complex manipulations of fabric, Róisín creates three-dimensional patterns that are moulded around the body, allowing structural inventions to emerge and lending each garment structure a forthright fluidity and form. She is committed to exploring the potential of zero waste cutting techniques, focusing on sustainable ways of creation through deadstock upcycling, material recycling and subsequently cultivating new surface textural opportunity with the aim to keep traditional technique alive and valued. Flower metaphors are prevalent, and these allusions to further play out in the constructive techniques, with bodices drooping in petals, and small floral buds peeking through embroideries on seams.

Róisín Pierce applied for a Golden Fleece Award to invest in materials and machinery, and expand upon her investigation of fabric properties, qualities, and skills with a focus on hand-smocking, shibori, hand-tying and pleating to create highly textured surfaces.