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

Joanna Galligan
Take ‘Er Up To 2019: Rebranding the Monto in Contemporary Dublin

This was part of the CVC Seeing in the Dark event held in The LAB in December 2019.

jonannag@icloud.com

Take ‘Er Up To 2019: Rebranding the Monto in Contemporary Dublin

The contemporary Irish audience’s relationship with the Monto has changed since the early 20th Century and is ever-changing. Observing the implications of branding an area that historically has been associated with the abuse and exploitation of women in Ireland, I wish to discover not only how the Irish commemorate history, particularly the history of Irish women. I will observe the difference between tasteful and distasteful commemoration of the Monto using the contemporary example of alcohol branding, in particular the Five Lamp’s Monto Red Ale. Through the commoditisation of what was once said to have been the largest Red Light District in Europe using tongue-in-cheek humour at the expense of the women who suffered violence and degradation, I have collected a telling portrait of the understanding of sex workers in the Irish media. In this paper I will observe the importance of taste in historical commemoration and distinguish forms of commemoration of the Monto which can be categorised in terms of their taste. Beyond this, looking at the role of the brand and business in the creation of Irish identity through marketing and the importance of tasteful commemoration in consumer products which are associated with the past and history. Using Five Lamp’s Monto red ale as an object of visual culture which tells a larger story and provides an insight into a contemporary understanding of the Monto, looking at the history of the ale’s branding and its original use of the murdered sex worker Honor Bright’s name, this paper will discuss the importance of standards of good taste in relation to sensitive subjects.