In Conversation with Visual Artist Róisín Mcgrath: On Grad Show “Meatify”, Raw Meat, Tooth Masks, Grotesque Tablescapes, and The Future of Ireland’s Art Scene

Róisín Mcgrath is an Irish multidisciplinary artist who is known for her unsettling, dream-like, and strange creations. If you scan her instagram @rooooooisin_design or even check out her website www.roisinmcgrath.art , you will be met with an array of wonderfully evocative shoots. From frilly and pink “Princess & The Pea” inspired sets to nauseating foodscapes with spaghetti and heinz hoops, Mcgrath knows how to grab your attention. In 2024, she exhibited her grad show “Meatify” at the creative and technological university, IADT. At first glance, it's an eerie depiction of the pressures women face today, particularly with plastic surgery. The cover girl can be seen with raw meat packs filling up her cheeks and lips into a disfigured mess, which unfortunately rings true for a lot of dysmorphic women. Róisín Mcgrath describes the project in her own words:

“Meatify is really about rejecting the pressures of social media on women’s appearances. These videos and reels where people are telling us how we should look, what we should eat, what supplements we should be taking, and what procedures we need done to our faces. They make me feel really disturbed and unsettled. It’s constantly something new everyday. These pressures just started to overwhelm and stress me out. I read this statistic that women receive 500 ads a day telling them how they should look.”

In this interview, we dive deeper into Róisín Mcgrath’s various “surreal, uncanny, and peculiar” projects, touching on her use of unconventional mediums like raw meat and plastic teeth. We talk about gory inspirations and beautiful deconstructions that form Mcgrath’s curious encyclopedia of dead fish, warped faces, bodies, and revolting food set designs. We also discuss the flourishing art scene in Ireland.

Where are you based, and what do you do?

I’m based in Dublin and my studio is in Flux Studios. I’m a visual artist who uses photography and sculptural set design to world-build.

You had a very successful and visually disturbing Grad Show at IADT 2024, called Meatify. What pushed you to use raw meat as the vessel for unrealistic beauty standards?

Honestly, raw meat has always really spoken to me. I wanted to be a butcher when I was younger because the textures were just so insane to me. I remember going to the butchers after school with my mum and wanting to put gloves on and just squish everything. It must be a sensory thing, like the idea of squishing disgusting textures in your hands is quite disturbing for people. I wanted to frighten people and grab their attention by attaching this horrible thing to the beauty industry.

In general, I always used raw meat as a medium. When I first started exploring still life photography I used a slab of raw minced meat and raw salmon with loads of birthday candles in them. I loved incorporating feminine fabrics like lace and silk because I think it juxtaposed the nauseating imagery of the raw subject.

When I was researching for Meatify, I came across so many gory and dystopian procedures now available to people. There are people using beef tallow on their skin and using snail treatments where they’re using the slime to boost skin elasticity. Seeing all these just crazy treatments online just made me feel like everything is turning super dystopian. It just made sense to use raw meat because it freaks people out, the same way these ads about women disturb me.

Can you tell us about the practical ways in which Meatify was executed, did you use FX makeup for your “botched” cover girl?

My really good friend India O’Shea who is an amazing makeup artist helped me create the prosthetic makeup for Meatify. I remember on the day it took her a few hours to make the model’s prosthetics truly horrifying.

I wanted the model to look botched as a commentary on how convincing some of these advertisements can be. Sadly, there are so many women who fall for marketing that preys on their insecurities.

As a young artist nearly two years on from your grad show, do you feel more certain of your artistic style now? 

Yes I feel more confident now in certain mediums like photography and sculpture, that I didn’t before. At the same time, I feel like I’ve hit the tip of the iceberg in a sense, like there’s so much more for me to explore and create. I’m pleased that I get to create more in various avenues, and grotesque art is just one of them.

One of your most unsettling bodily-horror props is definitely the tooth mask you created earlier this year. Can I ask where that idea came from?

It started with a collage from photos of my house mates. I cut up different parts of their faces and started experimenting with images of teeth and gums. I played around a lot with the composition and that’s what kind of inspired the tooth mask.

I also wanted to make something 3D instead of just a flat collage. I’m definitely interested in the shapes of bodies and faces and messing them up from an investigative standpoint.

It's funny because when I start projects I'm really just exploring structure and it ends up looking “scary” to some people. To me though, it all just looks beautiful. I don’t intentionally produce horror.

You’ve done a lot of set designs recently, particularly the “grotesque” table for Marina Mason’s music video “Failte an Aingil”. Is this kind of messy and striking art something you’ve become known for in the Irish creative space?

I wouldn’t say it's something I’ve become known for yet but it's something that I really enjoy and want to get more experience in.

I’ve previously worked with Nicole Holbrook to create similar tablescapes for a collection of hand embroidered hats and scarves she made. We wanted to envision a world where these garments would live. I created food sculptures based on this “whimsical” world. 

Food set design has been described as a medium that tells a story. Can you describe the messaging/story behind the “grotesque” table in Marina Mason’s music video “Failte an Aingil”?

The concept behind that was a banquet and as the music video progresses the images get more intense. We started that scene with “posh” characters sitting around a grand and proper table. As the tempo builds, the characters get more messy with the food and it's almost like the viewer is being dragged into a really bad trip.

There's loads of different textures and lighting happening around the food. The characters are feeding cake to each other from their hands and at one point someone eats olives off Marina’s feet.

All the food I used like spaghetti, spam, and pickles are super pungent foods so I just mashed them all together. I wanted people to almost gawk looking at it. The scene really reminds me of the vomitoriums from the Roman empire. I wanted the food styling to feel gluttonous and reflect over-consumption.

What other creatives, artists, musicians etc. inspire you the most currently? 

I’m loving Maya Golyshkina and her work. She basically creates these low-fidelity sets and photographs herself amidst them. They’re very bizarre and quite silly. I love how none of them are perfect and they’re very child-like.

Similarly, I’ve been a big fan of Rory Mullen’s work. He also creates mad weird sets. He did a piece where he covered his entire body in butter which I loved. His work really ranges from small scale to massive scale. I love the materials he uses, I think he recycles a lot of the materials he uses for different sets.

Are there any upcoming projects you can tell us about, or things you want to explore in the future, specifically within the Irish creative space? 

I’m hoping to work on a project with my friend Tree. We want to create sculptural puppets together.

I also just really hope to collaborate with other Irish creatives, because the scene is popping off at the moment. I feel like there’s so much happening right now. Even the Dublin Independent Fashion Week was so fabulous. It really feels like everyone is striving to make the creative scene happen in Ireland.

I don’t think people are going to give up on it even though it's hard to sustain. It's just a really nice and comforting thing to see. I'm definitely hoping to work with more Irish artists this year.

Written by Alex Kelleher (@alex_kelleher_) 

Edited by Niall Carey