A Landscape Rendered in Glass: Sally Fawkes

Near the border of Belgium and France, is an area called Avesnois. Comprised of mostly farmland the vast natural landscape is intersected by hedges, networks of rivers and streams, and avenues and forests of trees as well as the people who live there and intimately know this landscape. Exploring this pocket of the world, British artist Sally Fawkes took on the role of the visitor to create a body of work that reflects upon the countryside and lifestyles of the area.

MusVerre presents these works in the exhibition Vice VERsa. Fawkes was invited by the museum to reinterpret this area through a year-long residency that began in July 2017. The artist undertook field-research, wandering the land and making sketches and taking photographs. Her research process also involved talking with locals about their experiences, emotions and day-to-day activities.

This extensive research culminated in a series of glass sculptures that extrapolate the notions of places and borders and their dualities which are inspired by the location of the area between nations. Fawkes also observed the phenomena of opposites in the large roads and narrow country paths that divide the countryside; the experience of childhood and adulthood of the locals; and the strong presence of the past and future.

The spinning-top like shapes in the work Revealing Traces have a nostalgic tinge that recreates the wonder and innocence of childhood whilst also suggesting a certain instability that comes with working the land and adulthood. Whiles the colors, layer and lines of the Motion series and the piece Paths Between seem to present abstracted landscapes.

Using glass as her medium, Sally Fawkes portrays the richness and complexity of Avesnois.

‘Vice VERsa’ will be on display until February 17