Professor Sarah Glennie ∙ Director

NCAD WORKS 2025 provides a portal to the full breadth of work by our extraordinary graduates from across our four schools of Fine Art, Design, Education, and Visual Culture and encompasses students graduating from our broad range of undergraduate, postgraduate, and CEAD programmes.

We are extremely proud of this year’s graduating students who each in different  ways demonstrate NCAD’s belief in the vital contribution that creative practice makes to our society as a force that creates space for care, reflection, innovation and new thinking—all of which are essential to a cohesive and dynamic society and economy. 

NCAD’s graduates are the pipeline that drive Ireland’s creative and cultural sectors and their work will have an impact across society in years to come. 

Their own lived experience of our complex world is central to our graduates’ work.  As part of their journey, NCAD students have the opportunity to develop their creative practice beyond the walls of campus through long-term engagements with community partners and collaborators in a range of settings.  These collaborations expand their experience and understanding of key societal issues such as housing, cultural identity and social cohesion and climate crises, and are reflected in their final projects.

The work of this generation of NCAD students not only provides critical insights into society today, but also reminds us that the possibility of transformation exists with fresh, solution-focused thinking. Their creativity reinforces the power of art and design to influence and inspire real change. 

We hope you enjoy this digital experience of the work of our extraordinary graduates. 

We are extremely proud of all that they have achieved, and we look forward to following their creative journeys in the future.

Thomas St Campus

100 Thomas Street
Directions

6–14 June

Fri 6 6pm–9pm
Sat 7 10am–5pm
Sun 8 10am–5pm
Mon 9 10am–8pm
Tue 10 10am–8pm
Wed 11 10am–8pm
Thu 12 10am–8pm
Fri 13 10am–8pm
Sat 14 10am–6pm

Courses on show:

BA Fashion
BA Jewellery & Objects
BA Textile & Surface Design
Joint (Hons) Education Design or Fine Art
BA Graphic Design
BA Illustration
BA Moving Image Design
BA Interaction Design
BA Product Design
BA Applied Materials
Textile Art & Artefact
Hard Materials (Ceramics & Glass)
Media
Painting
Print
Sculpture & Expanded Practice
BA Visual Culture
MA Interaction Design
Prof. Dip. Service Design

Rua Red

Plás Parthalán, Tallaght
Directions

7–14 June

Sat 7 June 10am–6pm
Sun 8 June Closed
Mon 9 June 10am–6pm
Tues 10 June 10am–6pm
Wed 11 June 10am–6pm
Thur 12 June 10am–6pm
Fri 13 June 10am–6pm
Sat 14 June 10am–6pm

Courses on show:

MFA in Fine Art

Melissa O'Donnell

she/her

De:Coding Framework and Artwork Outputs

Melissa O’Donnell is an interdisciplinary artist whose MFA practice investigates institutional power, systemic marginalisation, and the role of emerging technologies. Central to her work is a self-devised 'De:Coding Framework', which blends cognitive strategies with experimental processes to examine how we perceive and respond to complex systems.

Painting, for her, is a subjective space where the physical, tactile, actual, and image collide—a language that resists being flattened into polished signs or virtual simulations. Through this framework, a new painterly grammar has emerged: a colour-coded language that embraces ambiguity and embodiment. Across moving image, text, and material experimentation, her work fragments perception and meaning as a form of resistance to the seamless logic of technological and political systems. Torn edges, saturated colours, and painterly gestures become cues for deeper concerns around themes of works. Optimistically, the practice seeks to reimagine how we connect, see, and build more just, responsive environments.