NCAD Graduate Design Show | Marie Varley’s Design Column
Irish Artist Marie Varley searches the country for the very best in Irish design to bring to you here on HeadStuff. This week she discusses her personal favourites from the NCAD Graduate Design Show.
Broken Perspective
A Womanswear collection of screen and digital prints
Barry’s candy coloured textile prints caught my eye the minute I walked into the ground floor of the School of Design building. The inspiration for his prints come from the idea of restoring beauty to the broken;

Craft Design – Ceramics
Jade’s collection of beautiful ceramic pieces is born from the premise of the collection and the human need to collect and consume. The results of this series of work are absolutely breathtaking.

“I began my research for this body of work with the question, “Do the objects we surround ourselves with tell a story?’ The question was formed in response to my mother’s collection of domestic ware, originally belonging to my great grandmother. My mother’s collection is of great personal value to her as her legacy of treasured family heirlooms because each object embodies part of her family history. My completed works are composed of clean, sleek ceramic forms with a combination of mixed media attributes to provide a touch of eclectic aesthetic.”
Safe Passage
Visual Communication

Less Is More
Gloss Paint, Emulsion & Electrical Tape on Steel

“These removals (colloquially known as buffs) hold a great intrigue for me as they mimic the aesthetic of minimalist and abstract expressionist paintings but don’t carry the same legitimacy due to their context and authorship. The original marks made on these facades predetermine the geometry of the final paintings as Dublin City Council and home owners paint over the segment of a wall that has been scrawled upon. This creates a series of radical and conservative compositions and acts as a form of unintentional collaboration between multiple members of the public. This removal system blockades urban conversations within the language of graffiti, however, they’re also opening up a new conversation within the dialect of urban erasures as these removals have ironically subverted their original purpose of censorship to become a series of paintings in their own right. Each area in which this source material is found carries an abundance of factors which makes up its aesthetic, this allows these paintings to become something much more than an aesthetic object, they are socio-economic signifiers for their origins and represent the multiplicity in visual waste aesthetics within Dublin.
In The Hand
Handmade Homewares For The Contemporary Eating Environment
