Common Denominator

The Art in the Contemporary World MA program partners with the Goethe-Institute, Dublin

The launch of the Common Denominator, a 2-year programme curated by Art in the Contemporary World. 

From September 2018 to September 2020, the MA/MFA Art in the Contemporary World at the National College of Art and Design, Ireland, will collaborate with the Goethe-Institut to programme a series of exhibitions and events in the Return Gallery at 37 Merrion Square – and beyond.

Titled, Common Denominator, the programme has its origin in the writings of Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius, who made a case for identifying the core qualities defining a particular style, or the principles from which new forms of building, and teaching, might progress. The Common Denominator programme at NCAD will take Gropius’s term as a starting point for reflecting on varieties and possibilities of commonality today. Through exhibitions, seminars, discussions and more, we will interrogate what it might mean now to speak of political solidarity, civic standards or even aesthetic values. We will consider – as Gropius sought to do – the relationship between common commitments and necessary possibilities of individual belief, expression and action.

The programme begins with a specially designed platform for the Return Gallery by New York-based, British conceptual artist Liam Gillick. This will stay for the 2018-2019 academic year — framing and contextualising an accumulation of activity with the artist and ACW’s postgraduate students.

Curated by Art in the Contemporary World, Ireland’s leading MA/MFA at the School of Visual Culture at the National College of Art and Design. Supported by the Kerlin Gallery.

See event information here.