SHARON FOLEY

Please don’t step on the Mat, 2007.
Neon glass with kiln formed glass, coir matting and bricks

I am a gatherer of images and articles from newspapers. It’s my sketchbook, but instead of turning a page and exploring ideas on clean paper, I paste my chosen newsprint to a roll of wallpaper and build a continual, living collage. When I step back from months of gathering, I see theme and connections and my work grows from there.

A theme that developed from my last wallpaper was of home, not so much to do with buildings but the way in which many people in this poverty stricken world live. Further research demonstrated to me how much the world has changed. For the first time in history, more people live in urban environments than in the countryside. Cities, mega cities (populations greater than 8 million) and hyper cities (populations greater than 20 million) are developing at an extraordinary pace and many people are forced to find suitably extraordinary ways of living in these places. For example, in China, the “caged men” cover their mattresses and sparse belongings with wire mesh to ensure they are not stolen when out working. In Hong Kong a quarter of a million are roof top dwellers. Cairo is famous for the “city of the dead,” the epithet for a million tomb dwellers and ‘garbage slums’ are found on the outskirts of Beirut, Khartoum and Mexico City.

My challenge was how to explore this subject using glass. The medium of glass with its seductive, transparent, light-catching qualities seemed far removed from the materials used in slum building like in the infamous ‘favelas’ of sheet metal, wood, mud and straw. This elegant material seemed to contradict the shameful conditions people live in, so I confronted this “contradiction” in order to make it tangible.

Sharp contrasts can be drawn between the almost exponential expansion of slums and the development of private gated communities, sometimes sitting adjacent to each other. Fences, barbed wire and security cameras surround homes in an attempt to make the inhabitants feel safe. Alternatively, the ‘architecture of fear’ can be viewed as an expensive cage with barriers keeping the residents locked in, living under strict rules and regulations, rather than keeping others out. I focused on this paradox and began to explore the contradictions of using glass to replace the materials used as barriers.

Biography pdf

Sharon Foley filler

Selected Biography

EMPLOYMENT & EDUCATION
2008 - present: Head of Glass Design, North East Wales Institute.
1992 - 1995: BA (Hons) Glass, University of Wolverhampton.