NCAD Works – Celebrating the work of Class of 2021

Its time to celebrate a year of achievement at National College of Art and Design (NCAD) as its year end graduate showcase opens.  NCAD Works 2021 will bring together the work of all of its final-year postgraduate, undergraduate and certificate students on one digital platform https://ncad.works/, with a range of talks and live student events taking place online, on the grounds of IMMA, and at various locations across Dublin from Thursday 24 June to Saturday 26 June.

NCAD Works 2021 features the work of graduates from NCAD’s Schools of Fine Art, Design, Education and Visual Culture, together with postgraduates from the MFA in Fine Art and the Professional Master of Education. In September the work of postgraduates from the School of Design will be added to the digital platform.

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, sustainability and the circular economy, celebrating the ordinary, women’s sexual health, and design for social change are key contemporary themes that the students’ work explores in this year’s show.

Some of the highlights of this year’s showcase include:

Gloom and Bloom; Combating Negativity in a Pandemic by Joint Education & Painting student Sarah Beegan explores growth and the pandemic. Her paintings are a mixture of personal experience based on fear and hope, with hope represented by floral imagery combined with a double exposure effect of hospital images, creating a strange narrative of growth and sterility. The work is a combination of oil and acrylic on large canvases, and experimental pieces on other surfaces like prosthetic limbs, paper and wood.
Rururban by Hannah Bohacova, a Sculpture & Expanded Practice student, is an interactive and playful installation featuring materials that evoke memories of the artist’s childhood, of land, knowledge of plants, food processes and recipes from her rural past, inserted into her new home in Dublin. It is her attempt to pass on the knowledge of plants and food processes to her children who will also share them with an expanded community ensuring they continue to become woven into urban spaces.
Final-year student in Graphic Design, Chloe Doyle explores the role design can play in helping to improve the sex education curriculum for Ireland’s second level students. Chloe’s work includes a comic zine that acknowledges and presents the current problem with the sex education curriculum and a sexual health toolkit, created in an attempt to provide the first step for change in the right direction. This toolkit provides reliably sourced content for those in secondary level education who have often been denied an adequate sex education.
Libera by Liana O’Cleirigh, a BA Interaction Design student, is an app that enables gig workers to gain control over their work by providing them with the same data the companies they work for have access to. The app crowdsources delivery drivers’ collective data, arming riders with the kind of insights that delivery platforms use to perfect their algorithms. Libera shares these insights with gig-worker unions in order to press platforms and governments for better pay, conditions, and protections for these gig workers.
A Brother, by Fashion student, Evan Duffy is a sustainable fashion collection focused on eco-friendly production and the concept of ‘leave no trace’. The collection was inspired by Duffy’s time in the scouts. It features a tongue in cheek approach to gorpcore, drawing inspiration from old military wear, trail signs and pioneering. Up-cycling is a key feature throughout this collection, highlighting how premium garments can be crafted from vintage or discarded clothes.

The live and virtual events taking place for NCAD Works 2021 include:

NCAD Works 2021: Talks
Departments across NCAD, including MA Fine Art, BA Visual Culture, Product Design, Communication Design, Painting and Sculpture & Expanded Practice, will host online talks and panel discussions. Join the students and invited guests as they discuss their works, their experiences at NCAD and what is next and upcoming in their areas. See NCAD’s social media or ncad.works for full details of the talks and book on ncad.ie.

NCAD Works 2021: IMMA Outdoors
From the evening of Wednesday 23 to Friday 25 June, the grounds of IMMA are host to a full programme of performances, talks and screenings, featuring work by NCAD’s 2021 graduates. Students were asked to imagine new ideas or adapt their existing work for an outdoor context, and they rose to the challenge. The IMMA grounds will showcase individual performances, readings, sound work, sculptural interventions, group performances, talks, and a series of screenings of student films in the front lawn pavilion. All events are free and further details will be available on NCAD’s social media sites and ncad.works from Wednesday 23 June.

NCAD Works 2021: Across the City
NCAD graduates have imagined alternative locations for their work across the city. From pop-up exhibitions at locations such as Temple Bar Medical Centre and the National Print Museum, to a performance in the Iveagh Gardens. Look out for the NCAD Works truck mounted with a giant LED screen which will be traversing the city all weekend sharing images of the students’ work.

Commenting on the end of a challenging year at NCAD, Professor Sarah Glennie, Director, National College of Art and Design, says: “This year’s graduate showcase creates a range of different ways for the public to experience the work of our outstanding graduates. There will be lots of opportunities over the coming three days to meet some of our students and to experience their work. I’d strongly encourage everyone to view the full range of our graduates’ work on our NCAD Works 2021 digital platform ncad.works, or to attend one of the events taking place over the next few days in IMMA, at various locations around Dublin, and virtually.

“We are exceptionally proud of the final-year and postgraduate students who are exhibiting their work in NCAD Works 2021. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to them and how well they have faced the immense challenges that the last year has posed. Studying and developing your practice is challenging at the best of times, but during a pandemic, this group of students has been faced with a particularly challenging environment in which to develop their final projects and collections. That this year’s work is of such an exceptional standard, is a huge testament to their dedication, resilience, creativity and the dedication of the NCAD staff who have supported them through this year.

Well done everyone!

The full programme of events and activities, as well as further information about this year’s showcase is available at ncad.ie and on our digital platform ncad.works, where you can also browse the students’ work and make enquiries about purchasing work.