TU Dublin GradX 2024 showcases individual, collective identities of creative arts, mechanical engineering and media graduates
TU Dublin's Schools of Art and Design, Media, and Mechanical Engineering present GradX 2024, the annual exhibition showcasing graduate work to the public. Participating for the first time, the Conservatoire brings a new dynamic to the exhibition. The event opens in East Quad, Grangegorman, on Thursday, May 30, at 6 p.m. and runs until June 8 (closed Sunday 02 June 2024).
Female identity features strongly. Fine Art student Sarah Lundy’s textile work explores historic media fetishisation of lesbians. Her soft textile depictions of earnest lesbian love counteract typical hypersexual representations. Leah Clarke (Visual Communication) interrogates Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for themes of control, dismissal, and belittlement of women. Echoing the fairy tale, Journalism’s Diana Lazar’s Smedia-nominated radio documentary, The Real Cinderella, tells the true story of Cinderella, born to a Filipino mother and Dutch father, who escaped their controlling influence to find her own happy ever after.
Creative Industries and Visual Culture student Aoife Maher's research, From Film Frames to Footsteps: Exploring Ireland’s Cinematic Landscape in Tourism. She focuses on the landscapes of cliffs, fields and small towns to explore intricate interactions between tourism dynamics and the creation of cultural identity. Space as place concerns Visual Merchandising’s Roisin O’Connor and Victor Igweze, and Interior Design’s Nicholas Connelly. Roisin’s installation mimics the sea, inviting viewers to contemplate the relationship between the natural world and modern lives, while Victor creates a space combining digital and physical elements to spotlight his clothing brand, GANDER. Nicholas conceives the Virtual Realm Nexus, an immersive innovation centre proposed for Dublin's Grand Canal Dock, highlighting a fascination with the design language of AI-generated cyber-inspired interiors with metallics, high-reflective surfaces, and sci-fi and space-age influenced elements.
Film & Broadcasting student, Amber McGrath's film, Magpie, explores social isolation and how those on either side of the generation gap have more in common than they know. Aoife Keeley (Fine Art) uses the lens of television and media to explore social issues, including living conditions in Ireland and the political absurdities of governing in her work Tragóid Ghaelach. Memory Lane, by Anjana Mohan (Visual Communication) creates an immersive exhibition experience that invites viewers to delve into the dynamic nature of photography, using family photographs to blur the lines between the personal and universal.
Elsewhere, students from Product Design present a diverse range of work including medical devices, health, safety and wellbeing products, educational, agricultural and furniture projects, demonstrating the breadth of capabilities that emerge from the programme, while Media students present photographic work that explores boundaries and identities, and video games that immerse the player in skilfully storyboarded and designed worlds.
The GradX identity, created by Visual Communication students Eilis Espina, Miriam Hurley, Sarah McEvilly and Ying Qi Tang, symbolises individual students using dispersed letterforms, which converge as words and phrases to represent their voices and showcase their individual and collective identities of over 200 students.
Visitors to GradX, which runs daily to June 08 (closed Sunday 2nd) from 10am to 5pm, can also see the University’s creative and cultural hub, the East Quad, located on the university's new in Grangegorman, Dublin 7. The exhibition also provides an opportunity to stroll through the 70-acre campus, situated on the grounds of the historic former penitentiary and mental hospital.
Find out more here - TU Dublin Graduate Exhibition 2024 (gradx.ie)