The School of Visual Culture plays a key role in the studies of every undergraduate student at NCAD. We introduce the latest ideas in critical thinking as well as the historical understanding to set their practices in context, whether as artists, designers, educators or writers. We also host our own BA programme in Visual Culture as well as MAs in Art in the Contemporary World and Design History and Material Culture.
Each year, BA Visual Culture students graduate as skilled writers and researchers, having used our classes and projects to develop expertise in their individual areas of interest. Each of this year's graduates has worked on a year-long project into an aspect of Visual Culture: Lisa Barriscale has studied the portrayal of the adolescent girl in recent movies; Luke Colgan has explored the contemporary trend to feminize menswear; Laura Crum has listened carefully to work out what separates noise from sound and music; James Delaney has interrogated the ways in which the internet and digital tools have stimulated critical practice by artists; Ellen Doyle has put ‘Heavenly Bodies’, a 2018 fashion exhibition in New York, under the spotlight; Grace Lynch has asked whether contemporary fashion and feminism are at odds; Epiphania Maminingo has taken on the utopian dreams and politics of Afrofuturism; Emma O’Connor has reflected on the ways in which the unstoppable rise of camera phones is changing our relation to the photographic image; and Penny Warnock has reviewed the material traces of political and social activism in Ireland today.
Visual Culture at NCAD extends beyond far the classroom and the library: our 2018-19 graduates have organised talks and ‘round-table’ discussions, issued fanzines and programmed performances.
Students in the School of Visual Culture often work with leading arts organisations in Dublin too. This year our partners have included the ESB Centre for the Study of Irish Art, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum at Collins Barracks and Rua Red, the innovative arts centre in Tallaght.
In 2018-19 we also enjoyed the insights of guest lecturers including Angela Nagle, a brilliant commentator on the political uses of social media; Glenn Adamson, one of the world’s leading writers on the crafts today; and Liam Gillick, an ever-stimulating thinker and artist.
