Kelly O'Brien: No Rest For The Wicked

‘No Rest For The Wicked’ highlights issues of gender roles, class identity, and the unseen labour of working class women. O’Brien’s work is influenced by her own upbringing in a council home with an Irish immigrant single mother and draws from shared knowledge, shaped and passed down by the working-class women in her life, women whose lives and labour have historically been rendered invisible.

Central to the work is the artist's mother, Janet O'Brien, a cleaner for over 40 years. At its core, ‘No Rest For The Wicked’ positions working-class women's lives as both sacred and political - insisting that invisible labour is not ordinary or expendable, but powerful, worthy of visibility, dignity and recognition.

‘No Rest For The Wicked’ is the first exhibition to be held at the Meanwhile Gallery, part of GASP!’s (Gloucestershire Arts & Social Projects) year-long project ‘Meanwhile in Gloucester’.