This year’s exhibition is different. As graduates, we have had to adapt to new and challenging circumstances. Moving to an online environment, we had to think of alternate ways to make our Graduate Exhibition come to life. In its translation into a digital space, the very real and tactile nature of the work we produce is obscured. In our daily lives, there is a sense of human and material touch which is equally obscured. Working from home, graduates are in a new environment. Their creative output extends into their domestic lives as their studies come to a close. It is the parallel between the materiality of our work and the absence of the sense touch that frames this year’s Graduate Exhibition.

This website presents the work of 102 graduating students from the TU Dublin School of Creative Arts, School of Mechanical and Design Engineering and School of Media. The exhibition represents the culmination of years of full-time study and gives our students the opportunity to showcase the results of their imagination, hard work, and creative skills.

Identity by Joana Ferreira, Hugh Kavanagh, Eva Martin, Ben Nagle.

TU Dublin School of Creative Arts
TU Dublin School of Mechanical and Design Engineering
TU Dublin School of Media

Contemporary Visual Culture

Aislinn Purcell
If Walls Could Talk: A Night in Dublin Analysis Through The Street Art Lens

aislinnpurcell@gmail.com

Street art has been saturating the streets of Dublin in the last decade. The changing Cultural landscape of the city is made palpable by looking through the street art lens. The gentrification of the city has ignited fury amongst the creatives of Dublin who through street art are expressing the desire to reform the capital city. A new wave of nightculture themed street art from Emma Blake's Sister Michael Mural to the controversial work of collective Subset, has been emerging in light of Dublin's growing infrastructure. Themes of Dublin's dying club culture to the homelessness crisis, are painting a night in the capital as a dark spectacle. Street artists are taking control of the public sphere with striking murals that demand the attention of the public. The murals discussed embody valuable socially engaged art, which is evident in the documentation of public engagement with the works. Through analysing street art as political, one can get a deep understanding into contemporary culture. Dublin’s street art is reclaiming the public space and imprinting on it to give a snapshot of life in the city. The sense of urgency being evoked in these works is rooted back to the overnight characteristic nature of the medium. Through an analysis of news articles commenting on the theme of night culture it is evident that street art on the streets are not just of aesthetic value. The collective communication between the artists and the viewer is speaking for a generation. There are a number of existing studies in the broader literature that have examined this relationship between public art and political representation making this a rich area of discourse . It is evident that street art possesses social power through its public engagement with the public sphere. Therefore, contemporary street art in Dublin is highlighting how gentrification is negatively affecting Dublin’s nighttime culture.