Artistic milestone for MTU
Two “momentous” exhibitions showcasing the art work of final year students of a new faculty at MTU will open in Cork today.
At 6pm this evening, Thursday, MTU Crawford College of Art and Design (CCAD) will launch the first of two Graduate Exhibitions 2025 at the university’s Bishopstown campus.
Combined, the exhibitions will feature the works of 120 final-year students across fine art, contemporary applied art, visual communications, photography and new media, and creative digital media.
This year’s exhibitions will mark the first within the new Faculty of Creative and Performing Arts and Media at MTU.
Professor Alistair Payne, Dean of the Faculty of Creative and Performing Arts and Media at MTU, said: “As the first graduate exhibition within the new Faculty of Creative and Performing Arts and Media, this is a very special and rather momentous moment.
“The creative work on display across the Department of Fine Art and Applied Arts and the Department of Media Communications, brings together a rich, diverse, and truly fabulous collection of works produced this year by our students,” added Prof. Payne.
The first exhibition kicks off this evening with the opening presentations and student awards for the Creative Digital Media + Visual Communications + Photography with New Media Graduate exhibition taking place in the Berkeley Centre, Bishopstown Campus. The presentations will be followed by a reception at the MTU James Barry Exhibition Centre. The exhibition will be open to the public from tomorrow, Friday, until 12 June.
The Creative Digital Media + Visual Communications + Photography with New Media exhibition, features the work of 73 graduates from photography with new media, visual communications, and creative digital media. The works span photography, projection mapping, digital learning, interactive interfaces, immersive virtual reality, sound, games, printed books, film, and design, with students reflecting on themes such as memory, identity, mental health, gender, ecology, storytelling, and digital culture.
The opening presentations for the Fine Art + Contemporary Applied Art Graduate Exhibition will take place at 6pm tomorrow at MTU’s Sharman Crawford Street Campus. The exhibition will be open to the public from this Saturday until 12 June.
The Fine Art + Contemporary Applied Art Exhibition presents work from 47 graduates offering a compelling array of media including painting, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, sound, video, and installation. Themes explored this year include feminist resistance, ecological mythologies, grief and memory, digital disruption, and spatial poetics.
Admission is free for both exhibitions and all are welcome to visit.
Rose McGrath, Head of School CCAD, said: “I am immensely proud of this year’s graduating students, whose work is bold, future-ready, and deeply engaged with the world around them. These emerging artists and designers are not only reflecting on our complex realities, but actively reshaping them through digital disruption, spatial poetics, and imaginative acts of storytelling. They are not just responding to the future – they are making it.”
Val Renehan, Head of the Department of Media Communications at MTU, added: “Identity and our relationships with people, planet, and place, as well as the cultural and social significance of these themes, act as a central thread in this year’s Media Communications showcase.”