Re-Cast: Sharon Baker

Sharon Baker’s exhibition Re-Cast presents her latest photopolymer intaglio prints. The prints bring to eye level the discreet, hidden-in-plain-sight, designs that we walk on every day; manhole covers, boundary boxes and drain covers, found at home and abroad. Sharon re-casts these functional everyday pieces of metal on paper as singular printed images, inspired as she says, by ‘the art of Tapiés and the road worker’s spray can’. The prints capture the physical characteristics of these cast-iron objects and highlight their ubiquitous presence in our neighbourhoods as access points to the subterranean networks and infrastructure that make our towns and cities work. She sees them as markers of the values, history and organisation of urbanisation, symbols of management, order and structure in our society. Sharon lives in Birmingham. She manages Sandwell Third Age Arts: a charity delivering arts experiences to improve health and well-being. She is a director of Birmingham Printmakers, an open access print workshop, and a director of Make It Better C.I.C. supporting communities to live well through the arts. Her work has been shown in several national print competitions and in solo shows across Wales and the West Midlands.