安德魯．布華頓．如是說
莎莉．福克斯（Sally Fawkes）於1999至2001年擔任柯林．雷德的工作室助手，此期間參與了雷德在上海公共圖書館的大型公共雕塑《竹簡》作品。在系列作品「永恆的交流」（Eternal Exchange），運用材質的內部與表面質感做對比，在創作過程使用窯鑄、冷工、雕刻、鏡像與塗漆等方式，透過光的反射、折射或朦朧感，讓作品與周圍環境產生互動關係。
《永恆的交流 IX》Eternal Exchange IX／photo by Richard Jackson
《永恆的交流 IX》Eternal Exchange IX／photo by Richard Jackson
福克斯受到柯林．雷德對創作思考的薰陶，但她對創作的細節，以及自然與人類世界的結構或故事等，有自己獨到的詮釋與延伸，運用窯鑄玻璃與其他新媒材的結合，走出一條自己獨特的路。本次展覽作品中的《匯聚連結 II》（Converging Connections II 2018），是她在法國薩爾波特里玻璃博物館駐村時，結合窯鑄玻璃與複合性水性樹脂的重要創作，同一時期的作品《反之亦然》也是經典。福克斯觀察並運用鐵製拉桿凸起的裝飾部分，將房屋的牆壁固定在一起，運用窯鑄玻璃和複合性水性樹酯的創新雕塑藝術品，喚起了薩爾波特里城市過往服裝工業的繁榮，以及人們生活中裝飾細節的永久價值與意義。是「美」，將人居住的房子、環境與社群連結在一起。
《匯聚連結 II》Converging Connections II／photo by Richard Jackson
Andrew Brewerton said……
Sally Fawkes (1968) worked as studio assistant to Colin Reid from 1999–2001, a period including the installation of Bamboo Scroll (1999) at the Shanghai Public Library, and is represented here by both her personal work and by collaborative pieces designed and made with her partner, Richard Jackson (b.1959). Her work contrasts the interior substance of the object with surface qualities that in diverse ways reflect, refract or obscure articulation with their surrounding spatial environment. This is certainly the case with three works in Fawkes' Eternal Exchange series, numbers VI (2018), IX (2019) and XI (2019), to the degree that they are configured in cast, cold-worked, engraved, mirrored and painted glass. It is also true Converging Connections II (2018), in cast glass and jesmonite, which derives from a residency at Musverre in Sars-Poteries (France) that resulted in a major exhibition–installation in 2018.
Fawkes shares with Reid an intense regard for the incidental details and textures of the natural and human worlds, their structures and their histories, and her work both embodies and transforms the significance of such incidents in glass combined with other materials. In Vice-versa (2018), the installation–exhibition arising from her Musverre experience, material co-ordinates for the artist's imaginative inquiry into the spatial, social and cultural parameters of a particular place are configured and transformed in careful and telling detail. Converging Connections II (2018), showing here in Liuli China Museum, is a strong example of this. Here the decorative end-bosses of iron tie-bars that Fawkes observed bracing the walls of houses together (technically speaking, moulded ornamental iron washers with central nut fastenings) are transformed into a sculptural artefact in glass and jesmonite, variously evoke the town of Sars-Poteries' industrial past, its former manufacturing prosperity and the enduring significance of decorative detail in people's lives. Aesthetics holding house and community together.
