Irish Arts Review asked six critics to profile the emerging talents of these exceptional BA graduates from colleges in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
It is difficult to envisage this year’s top tranche of Fine Art BA graduate students as an exotic form of sentinel species finely attuned to the national Zeitgeist, scanning the cultural radar, articulating social anxieties, cultivating refined didactic principles. Some recent commentators have chosen however to view them in such terms.
Despite the ubiquity of so-called new media – photo/digital/film/video, and a scattering of more traditional forms, one cannot discern any sense of homogeneity or unity of ideological intent among these selected works. This is hardly surprising given the disparity, range and diversity of students, media and institutions concerned.
Janet Mullarney’s sculptures perform as metaphors, not portraits, writes Cliodhna Shaffrey