TUS Graduate Showcase to reflect key themes from 80 emerging designers

Sustainability, mental health, body positivity, the impact of bullying, and social media addiction are among the key contemporary themes being explored at this year’s TUS Athlone Campus Graduate Showcase.

The showcase will run from today (Monday) until Wednesday, May 24.

'Velocity' brings together the work of 80 emerging designers and visual artists, showcased through a variety of mediums, including short film, video game audio, augmented and immersive reality, posters and wearable technology.

The interdisciplinary showcase, which features work from students in the BA in Graphic Design, BA (Hons) in Graphic & Digital Design, and also includes work from the first graduating class of the BSc (Hons) in Music & Sound Engineering this year.

The programme leader of the BSc (Hons) in Music & Sound Engineering, Mike O’Dowd, said:"We are very excited for our first group of final-year music and sound engineering students to be showcasing their work at this year's exhibition.”

“Our students are exhibiting a wide variety of work ranging from music composition portfolios, audio visual composition, short film, video game audio, wearable technology, and generative audio through digital body capture."

Students from the BA (Hons) in Animation and Illustration, the only programme to combine both animation and illustration at undergraduate or postgraduate level in Ireland, have displayed their talents through illustrated graphic novels, picture journals, immersive games, augmented experiences and animated films.

Programme coordinator for the BA (Hons) in Animation & Illustration, Yvonne Hennessy, explained: “They have produced fabulous, wild and wonderful illustrated, animated, augmented and immersive projects for their final year submissions, which showcases their individual interests, their study of the world around them and their capturing and dissemination of this intrigue through form, colour, texture, extended and augmented realities and of course, movement.”

According to Programme Coordinator for both the BA in Graphic Design and BA (Hons) in Graphic & Digital Design, Tara Cullen, the showcase gives students the opportunity to “exhibit all their talents and creativity” after being “nurtured by a team of dedicated lecturers here in Athlone.”

“We have seen the students flourish and now they have the knowledge, skills and experience necessary to go out into industry as fully rounded designers,” she added.

“They’ve worked hard all semester on their final projects to showcase that by researching, conceptualising and solving problems on a number of current issues, from sustainability to social media addiction to bullying. It is great to see the projects come to fruition.”

Breda Lynch, who heads the Department of Polymer, Mechanical & Design, said students can be “incredibly proud of their achievements” as they showcase their final graduate work and embark on “exciting and rewarding career paths.”

“Over the course of their studies here in at TUS Athlone Campus, each student has developed their own unique set of skills: creative, innovative; critical thinker and technically competent,” she said.

The TUS Graduate Showcase 2023, which was launched by Mary Doherty, founder of Red Dog and president of the Institute of Designers in Ireland (IDI), is open to the public from May 15 until May 24 from 10am to 4pm in the Engineering Building, TUS Athlone Campus.

Visit tus.ie/athloneshowcase to learn more.