Isobel Dunne

Isobel Dunne is an artist and educator whose work explores perception, identity, and authority through the lens of Irish youth culture. Rooted in her upbringing in Balbriggan, North County Dublin, her practice reflects on how branded clothing, worn to the point of uniformity, shapes how young people are viewed, misread, and policed.

Drawing from real experiences, particularly those of her younger brother, she investigates themes of surveillance, stop-and-search encounters, and the tension between self-expression and social scrutiny. Working in a loose, observational style, Isobel uses reduced or monochrome palettes to focus attention on clothing and mood. Her compositions include recognisable yet unresolved evidence like Nike runners and balaclavas. Text-based works layer institutional language with the lived voices of her subjects, exposing the gap between how youth are perceived and how they perceive themselves. Isobel documents how youth, class, and control are visually coded in clothing, with perception felt before expressed.