Painting and the power of memes

In his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" as a name for a "unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation". He was referring to the non-genetic process by which ideas are disseminated throughout a culture via imitation and adaptation, and both word and concept have now entered common usage - in a self-illustrating way.

NCAD Fine Art Postgraduate Exhibition 2002, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery until June 16th (01-8741903)

Most years at the NCAD degree show there is evidence of one or two conspicuous memes.

This year, for example, there seems to be a sudden plethora of peephole lenses. As you make your way around the show you find yourself repeatedly having to press your eye up against a tiny lens to make out . . . something or other beyond.

The person who takes the idea and really runs with it is Ruth Shaw, who offers us a series of glimpses into an ingeniously visualised Lilliputian world. It is tough on fine art students, having to compress their years of experience and narrow their options down to one relatively contained display or installation. Shaw does it very well, as do many of her peers at NCAD, Dún Laoghaire and DIT, though there are numerous examples of graduates who obviously have a lot going for them but just cannot distil it into one concentrated show-stopper.

Sandra Lulei (NCAD), for example, makes beautifully delicate fragments equating the human organism with the earth in various ways. They remain fragments but are very good nonetheless. Derek Johnson's (DLIADT) work combines images and interviews with young people in a bid to determine what youth culture is. I would argue that the interviews are actually stronger than the images because he hasn't quite figured out how to integrate the two. But the overall thrust of the work is good enough to warrant further development.

It is true to say that, in the widest sense, aspects of figure and landscape continue to dominate the fine art departments in various ways. The dominant landscape tradition in Ireland tends towards the romantic and picturesque rather than the topographical, and it used to be commonplace to encounter masses of work at student shows that was perfectly competent but uncritically attuned to such ways of seeing.

There is, however, a growing body of photography that reflects the changing face of the country in a pictorial idiom closer to the influential teachers and photographers Bernd and Hilda Becher of Germany than, say, Paul Henry.

Philippe Sibelly (DLIADT) is a diploma, rather than a more advanced degree student, but his The Wicklow Way is a really outstanding project. He simply visited and photographed various illegal dumps in the Garden of Ireland and produced images that counterpoint man-made quagmires with our more conventional view of Wicklow.

Cian Burke (DLIADT), has made extremely good photographs of motorways by night, ambiguous images of an emergent infrastructure echoed in the work of DIT's Niall O'Riordan.

Even more deadpan are Sam O'Farrell's (DLIADT) oddly fascinating architectural studies. Declan Managhan (DLIADT) performs a valuable task in his explorations of the proliferating suburbs, as does DIT'S Louise Cribbins, who has produced some terrific images. Both of them, incidentally, happened on and used exactly the same place when they were location hunting.

An even more dystopian view of social space emerges in Derek Cummins's installation of a marginalised dwelling at NCAD. It recalls the Dadaist Kurt Schwitters in the way imagination soars even as constraints tighten. Christopher Reid's (NCAD MA) Dublin Memories is an ingenious and engrossing compendium that amounts to a valuable slice of folk community history. Arron Inglis (DLIADT) attempts and largely succeeds in providing us with the chance to interactively explore a real, vital, urban environment, George's St Arcade in Dublin. Anthony Hobbs (NCAD MA), fashions a stunning exploration of the ruined Woodstock House in Co Kilkenny, locating it in terms of its historical meanings without forsaking a sympathetic eye for its rich visual qualities. A collection of images is augmented by a haunting image translation, on a plasma screen, from then to now.

It may be an over-simplification to conclude that while male students tend to look outwards, female students are more inclined to tackle body and identity issues. There is certainly some evidence that this is the case, but it could rightly be argued that these issues radiate outwards into the social and political fabric. Yet even when David Buckley (DLIADT) offers a critique of masculinity in his witty embroidered media images, there is something ironic and detached about it, a certain distance and dispassion. The women are more there.

Anne Marie O'Brien's (DLIADT) series of body-image photographs entails an element of bravura performance on her part and she carries it off brilliantly. Both DIT's Claire Meaney and NCAD's Eleanor Philips make particularly forceful installations that deal with the same general area, using, respectively, humour and exceptional ruthlessness.

Nadine McDonagh's (NCAD) works relating to her experience of motherhood also pack a considerable sensory punch, and it must be said that James Hayes's (DLIADT) efforts to convey things from the father's side, after a faltering start, culminate in quite a striking, pulsing installation. Emer Fitzpatrick's doctor's waiting room installation (DIT) puts us immediately into the position of the patient. Margureita Ledwidge's (NCAD) remarkable photographic prints of young children, about the imprinting of religious dogma and values, are very strong and fairly terrifying, with an almost palpable sense of menace about them.

Grace Doheny's (DIT) cinematic portraits, under the collective title Anticipation, have a particular, heightened quality about them that suggests this is the way to go for her. Ruth Wilkinson's (DLIADT) fragmentary views of limbs, circular in format, as if glimpsed through one of those peepholes beloved of NCAD students, also have an inexplicably winning quality. Perhaps they just work really well because she has an eye.

Claire O'Rorke's (DLIADT) bleached out images make up a thoughtful essay on the idea and experience of visual impairment. They are a perfect example of images that make us think about what we cannot see, and why. Both Anne Carroll (DLIADT) and Jennifer Baker (DLIADT) make strong bids at visualising transcendent experience. NCAD's Clare Cashman, in a more down-to-earth way, opens up spaces for speculation or meditation in a series of strong images, while DIT's Nicola Doyle is on a similar wavelength with her polaroids of skies.

There is another kind of transcendence in Gillian Kane's inventive evocations of flight (NCAD), and in Amy O'Neill's beautifully atmospheric, understated prints in Reverie (DLIADT), or indeed Judith Hynes' (DLIADT) delicate, moon-like prints.

Shirley McGlynn's extremely atmospheric exploration of the former Atlantis commune in Donegal recall Francesca Woodman's ghostly self-portraits. There is a comparable quality to Edward Mullin's poetic, interactive exploration of a dilapidated interior in his piece (DLIADT). And Emilie Chauvet's (DLIADT) interactive evocation of a surreal, dreamlike landscape displays a high level of visual and dramatic inventiveness and a real feeling for fantasy.

IT is not a great year for the painting meme, if there is such a thing. Not to say that there aren't a few interesting painters. Ross McDonnell's eclectic, slickly made work (NCAD)evokes the paintings of Paul Nugent but is good in its own right. The content of Lorraine Lawlor's painted, found letter fragments (DIT) pointedly belie the neutrality of their method and presentation. Charlotte Swan (NCAD) has great feeling for landscape, recalling John Virtue in the way she positively writes as much as depicts her experience of place in sweeping calligraphic statements.

Sheila Melvin (NCAD) does some interesting things with manually distorted digital photographic prints. Oliver Whelan's (NCAD MA) painting installation is an hypnotic, almost clinical exploration of the process of painting in a removed, formalist context. Similarly Aoife Collins (NCAD) stands back from painting to make intriguing site-specific "paintings" using a variety of household cleaners and other proprietary products.

Elsewhere, it is a problem that the painting that figures as an element in the work of several artists, including for example Eve Parnell O'Hanlon and Paul Cronly (both NCAD), comes across almost as an afterthought. By far the best component of Cronly's work takes the form of video sequences built from extracts from 1950s films. In their new context these acquire an eerie, magical atmosphere.

There are some artists who come across as being outstanding in different ways, like Aslaug Arna Stefansdottir (NCAD), whose sculptural installations are amazingly complete and coherent - and powerful. Desiree Flynn's (DIT) autobiographical essay on her life as a "sugar factory kid" is very convincing as, in John Berger's phrase, "another way of telling". Cyril Briscoe (NCAD MA) takes an underused form, the sound installation, and redefines the gallery space (as the cliche has it and as, in this case, he really does) by making the audio tracks dependent on our presence. It's a piece you have to experience, and although, given that there are literally hundreds of works in the various student shows, the effort involved is not inconsiderable, they are all worth it.

Reviewed:

National College of Art and Design (NCAD) Fine Art Faculty Degree Exhibition 2002, Thomas St Campus until June 16th (01- 6364200)

Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (DLIADT) School of Art, Design and Media Graduate Exhibition 2002, DLIADT Campus, Kill Avenue until June 13th (01-2144600)

Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) Fine Art and Photography Graduate Exhibition 2002, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin Castle, National Photographic Archive (and peripheral venues) until June 15th