TU Dublin’s Creative Arts Graduate Showcase ‘GradX 2023’ embraces disruption and imperfection

TU Dublin’s Art, Design, and Media disciplines present GradX 2023, the annual exhibition showcasing graduate work to the public.

The event opens in the East Quad, Grangegorman, today, Thursday, June 1, at 6 pm and runs until June 10 showing from 10 am to 5 pm daily.

With diversity, freedom of thought, and the exploration of new possibilities at its heart, GradX showcases work by over 200 students in fields ranging from fine art, product design, interior decorating, furniture design, visual merchandising, visual communication, journalism, film and broadcasting, photography and game design.

Exhibitions on gender include Oriana Nicoara’s ‘FloFriend’, a dispenser to help primary schools address the stigma associated with menstruation and address period poverty.

Keely Mc Clavin’s She Can Hear How, She Is Not Heard addresses gender inequality, gender-motivated violence, and the difficulties of being a woman in a patriarchal society.

Finally, Dee Byrne’s photographic and video project, The Woman, The Witch, and the Wanderer, responds to a resurgent interest in nature-based and pagan practices to delve into Ireland’s relationship with witchcraft and the role of women in this mythology.

The sense of location or dislocation is addressed in provocative yet enriching ways.

Kimberley Chaila analyses Ghanaian and Nigerian use of online platforms to promote cultural forms such as Afrobeats, repositioning African nations as dynamic wielders of soft power.

Obafemi William-Funmilayo, meanwhile, developed a series of modular slip-casting moulds to revive traditional West African ceramic craft practices, and photographer Patryk Gizicki’s Stay Forever More is an excavation of memory and emotion as he returns to Castlebar, his first hometown in Ireland after emigrating from Poland as a child in the Celtic Tiger era.

Head of the School of Art and Design, John Walsh, said: ‘The GradX identity embraces disruption and imperfection to convey a refreshing perspective through a collision of colour and type.

“The riot of colour on the logo communicates the clash of opinions and ways of thinking in the various disciplines, through a chaotic, and sometimes jarring, identity.

“While experimenting with disruptive design elements, the identity maintains a consistent use of Times New Roman, a conventional typeface used in an unconventional manner, disrupting the familiar.’

Visitors to GradX, which runs daily to June 10 from 10am to 5pm, can also visit 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.