Abracadabra

An exhibition of work by recent graduates at the RHA certainly works its magic on Billy Leahy

A piano piece based on the genetic code of a fruit fly, delicate etchings, paintings, mixed-media works, no less than three DVD pieces and an origami installation: welcome to the annual Royal Hibernian Academy's exhibition of recent graduates. Amazingly, considering the range of media employed and the variety of visual languages on display, this year's show congregates under an umbrella theme, which is set out in the title of the exhibition: It is a Kind of Magic.

Also remarkable for a show which picks its participants from the full range of recent graduates from art schools across Ireland, is that the six artists chosen for this year's exhibition hail from NCAD. It is of course almost expected that graduate exhibitions and recent graduate shows tweak the imagination – there is always a positive rawness to the works that is absent from established artists, while coming to new work by unknown artists is refreshing. This year's show is no disappointment.

Anne Hendrick leads the viewer into the main space of Ashford Gallery with her 23 small-scale works, their delicate and fragile nature providing a low-key and considered introduction to the show. The mixed-media-on-board works use photography as their source point – but the images of real places and scenes are transformed by a reinterpretation of their form and material nature. What results are simple images, not dissimilar to the Royal Art Lodge aesthetic, that linger deftly on the border between an imagined world and reality.

A transition also occurs in Denise Reilly's DVD work 'Growth' in which a dress from her childhood is encapsulated within a block of ice that then gradually melts to create an allegory for the transition from childhood to adulthood and the wearing away of parental protection. Maire O'Mahoney has also chosen to exhibit a DVD piece in which she uses the traditional story of the Handmaiden's Tale as inspiration for an impressively convincing work focused on a psychological journey into maturity.

Towards the back of the room, a cartoon character constantly distracts and attracts the attention as it skips and bounds in Tom Moore's repetitive DVD loop, which is accompanied by a patience-testing audio track. The work adds little to his brilliant etching on digital works, which deal with fantastical worlds of childhood that appear to be born of an innocent yet sinister imagination barely restricted by notions of its own consciousness.

Priscila Fernandes' 'Drosophila Melanogaster' (fruit fly) for the piano is a mature and playful audio piece accompanied by a completed manuscript, which transposes the genetic code for a fruit fly into music. The work, which Fernandes attributes to one of her alter egos, Ana Garcini, has elements of Fluxus musical composition and performance about it and works impressively both musically and conceptually.

Also touching on alternate identities and influences is Oisín Byrne, who claims a pseudonym friend, Amelia Blossom, inhabits his recent ethnically inspired paintings and eye-catching origami mobile.

It is easy to get lost in the alternative worlds, alter egos, pseudonyms and loosely defined arenas occupied by this year's recent graduates. Why these themes should have come to the fore, perhaps fittingly, retains a certain mystery – but whatever the underlying reasons, It is a Kind of Magic provides a stimulating escape.