Transition time

When the Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design reopens for the start of a new academic year next autumn, it will be part of the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology.

It's a major revamp which sees the old college increasing its staff levels, its student numbers, its facilities and even rethinking its educational philosophy. Sculptor Aileen McKeogh, erstwhile lecturer at the NCAD and director of Arthouse, is already installed as Head of the Art & Design school, one of three departments created in the reshuffle.

Its recent Annual Degree Exhibition, representing a transitional moment for the College, provided an opportunity to see where it's heading. In Fine Art, a leaning towards installation recalled the NCAD. Gillian Duffin's user-friendly environment was an antidote to the forbidding gallery space with its untouchable objects: her sculptures invited touch.

The juxtaposition of peat, ash, tin cans and body casts was used by Fiona Ginnell to suggest the reciprocal relationship between organism and environment. Body and identity issues were evident in work by, for example, Rebecca Byrne, or Lynn Schulmiestrat, who explored domestic spaces.

Photographer Lisa Caldwell had a beautifully executed project matching people with the contents of their fridges. There were also painters, photographers and printmakers in the more conventional sense of the term. What was particularly notable, though, was a leaning towards multidisciplinary areas.

Two points are emphasised by McKeogh. One is that the Technology part of the Institute's title is being taken very much to heart, the other is that "collaboration across courses is very important." Cross-disciplinary flexibility is seen as central to the overall strategy.

There are good reasons as to why this should be so. The traditional categories of artistic practice around which art school departments were built are becoming increasingly unreliable. As this year's NCAD graduate show demonstrated, there are "sculptors" who never do anything resembling sculpture, "painters" who never paint. Either might routinely use photography or video as a primary medium. Or, if their work is conceptually based, they may not be confined to any particular medium or form at all, may even, like the conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth, use just other people's texts.

So it's not only about the impact of new technologies, it's also a question of how to make art and what art is. But having said that, the impact of technology is considerable. Art students everywhere are visibly intoxicated by the promise of newly available technologies, and interdepartmental leeway is not so much desirable as essential.

In practical terms what does this mean? Well, in Dun Laoghaire there's the school of interactive media, somewhat on the lines of one mooted for the NCAD. There is perhaps a tacit recognition here of the fact that problems arise when the technology, or the intoxication with technology, becomes an alibi for substance.

It's not enough that you find computers and printers wonderful in themselves, you have to do something wonderful with them. Until the 1960s, the core discipline in art schools, and, for that matter, art's lingua franca, was drawing. The saga of its subsequent displacement and demotion, and its qualified reinstatement, reflects the continuing debate about what art should be. Generally speaking, drawing has always been an important strand in Irish art schools, at least officially.

Beyond academic definitions, drawing in its widest sense is central to creative activity. Are computer skills the new lingua franca for art students? McKeogh contends that they are now as vital. But, even given Dun Laoghaire's technological emphasis, she sees drawing as a fundamental component of student practice.

The principal at Cork's Crawford College of Art and Design, Geoff Steiner-Scott, points out the extent to which its graduate show "leans on our reputation as a place where drawing and making are central to the various departments."

While the Crawford students by no means shy away from electronic media in an immensely diverse and stimulating exhibition, case for case the work does bear this out. Whereas in Dun Laoghaire the - very promising - stone sculptor, Eamonn Keegan, was virtually a lone voice, in Cork, with its internationally recognised foundry facilities and a strong ceramics department, there was a pronounced emphasis on fabrication and materials. Vicki Hurley, for example, is an extremely capable stone carver. Helle Helsner is a very good figurative modeller who casts her work in bronze. Conor McNicholas is a welder in the Smith-Caro-Burke mould.

The same holds true in other departments. Lucy Phelan and Grainne Buckley are extremely accomplished printmakers. John Brennan, Valerie Cummins, Andrea Halpin, Teresa Collins and Lydia Lynagh are all good painters, and so on. There is a focus and depth to their work that comes from sustained involvement with their respective media.

Equally, however there was outstanding work that used electronic media inventively, including beautiful pieces by printmaker Jo Carey and painter John Halpin, whose computer manipulated prints are of outstanding technical quality. And it is true that students at the Crawford evidently don't feel constrained by their nominal departmental label, any more than those at Dun Laoghaire. There are examples of cross-overs in all categories, though it's worth noting that printmaking particularly, in an era dominated by mechanical and electronic reproduction, is a virtually limitless arena.

In summary, the abiding impression of the two graduate shows is that Dun Laoghaire is putting its money very specifically on interaction, collaboration and technology, while the Crawford takes a more open view. But then, while it too has developed enormously over the last decade, it hasn't had to shape its identity in the shadow of the NCAD.