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The Graduate Exhibition of the TU Dublin School of Creative Arts is the highlight of the academic year for our students and staff. This online catalogue represents the culmination of many years of full time study and gives our students the opportunity to showcase the results of their imagination, hard work and creative skills in a public arena. The exhibition features work from all our programmes and highlights the exciting and innovative range of work produced by our graduates across Fine Art, Furniture, Product, Interior, Visual Merchandising, Visual Communication Design and Creative and Cultural Industries.

The 2022 exhibition is particularly special as it is the first opportunity we have had to invite the public to our brand new East Quad Arts building and give everyone a chance to see our magnificent new studios and workshops.

The identity and design of this year’s exhibition, catalogue and website was created by Visual Communication students Marwa Noelle Ali, Conor Rice and Aisling Hannon. Their design uses manipulated type to illustrate the progression from individual broken up pixels to full letterforms, to represent the coming together of the final year cohort in the post pandemic era.

Launch June 2, 6pm
Open Daily June 3—11, 10am—5pm
East Quad, TU Dublin, Grangegorman, Dublin 7

Valentin Rechitean

Valentin Rechitean uses traditional photographic methods, computer and digital technology to create his images. Some of his more known projects include Where Your Data Lives, which uses satellite imagery to highlight the growing number of data centres in Dublin and Not Street Photography which uses game engine technology to explore the future of The Metaverse and virtual worlds. With his previous projects, Valentin has used technology to restore and digitise photographic museum collections and has designed numerous photobooks and websites. When shooting digital, he tends to manipulate his photographs using film simulation technology. This gives his images a look and feel reminiscent of the photographs created by photographers such as William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and Martin Parr.

Not Street Photography

This project looks at the future of graphics engines to create virtual worlds or the metaverse. "Not Street Photography" takes traditional street photography techniques and applies them to an ultra-realistic virtual world. By doing so Valentin was able to highlight the uncanny graphical capabilities of the game engine. These ultra-realistic engines will one day be used to power connected virtual worlds, games and even create movies. Will virtual reality replace our smartphones and if so, what impact will it have on our society?

The smartphone has been integrated into our lives, and we are only now beginning to see the negative impacts it has had on our society. Imagine a future where instead of picking up your phone and scrolling, you pick up a Virtual Reality headset and log onto a virtual world powered by similar graphics engines. This world will be almost identical to the real world and it will be where you go to work, where you socialise and where you relax. How will this change our real world behaviour? My aim with this project is to question a reality where we will become dependent on this new technology and how that can affect our lives and behaviours.

Where Your Data Lives

Where The Data Lives was created to highlight the growing number of data centres in Dublin, Ireland. Hidden in plain sight, the best way to view these vast buildings are from the air. From ground level it is hard to tell what these building are, as they are often surrounded by huge fences, hedges and trees. But, take to the sky and only then the scale of these operations are revealed. The next iteration of the web also known as Web3 will vastly rely on data centres like this to power decentralised finance and virtual worlds. With such a large number of data centres, concerns of high power consumption and the defacing of the rural Irish landscape arise.