Marie Foley

Marie Foley is a sculptor. She was born in Kanturk and studied Fine Art at the Crawford College of Art, Cork, Goldsmiths College, London and Cardiff College of Art and was awarded an MA in 1987.

Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Ireland, England, Wales, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Holland, Hungary, Poland, Finland, Canada, USA and Japan. She was the first Irish Artist to have a solo Exhibition in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.

Public commissions include Kilkenny Castle, The Office of Public Works at 51-52, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, a sculpture for National Universities of Ireland Presentation to President Mary Robinson, Cothú Awards, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdrum County Council and Wilton Library, Cork.

She has received various Arts Council awards. Other awards include an International Ceramic Award, a Canada Council award and The New Horizons Award from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. She became a member of Aosdána in 1996.

Marie Foley’s sculpture is composed of elements which are carved in yew, bog oak, ash, sycamore… elements which are modeled in porcelain, and sometimes additional hand-worked or salvaged elements in metal, stone etc. Her artistic practice is inspired by a profound interest in nature and the deeper universal significance of all. Her language is one of symbolic form.

The walls of Marie’s studio contain many clues to the origins of her art. There are photographs of trees, dry stone walls and the karst typography of the Burren, the mud and wood temples of Djenne and Mopti in Mali, aerial views of African villages, objects in the Pitt Rivers museum and other museums she has visited, Native American Shields and rattles, wooden fishing traps from Finland, Eskimo fishing spears. Every surface is covered with a fascinating mix of hand forged tools, crow skeletons, mechanical components, vintage kitchen implements, old calipers, weighing scales and other measuring tools, milk bottles containing porcelain elements, rust worn pikes and forks, the whitened jaw bones of a cow with rows of perfect teeth, stones with map-like lichen markings, fossil stones, metal locks from India, dried gourds, fish skeletons, a dolphin skull, rusty augurs, a saint Brigid’s cross…. alongside endless work in progress.

Her father John Foley was a drainage contractor in the sixties and seventies and reclaimed many fields in various town lands around Kanturk and beyond. She grew up with a fascination for old maps documenting field patterns and the wonderful sounding and meaning of their names: Lisnashearshan, Knocknacolon, Lisnaboy, Gorteenfinnoge, Glounicomane…. When he died in 1988 she kept his worn land drainage maps with their attending Land Project information knowing she would eventually draw them into her work. For the Kanturk Arts festival Marie will exhibit some of her field map drawings along with some of her sculpture.

Carrickmourne, Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny. Tel: 056-7724905. Email: iubhar@eircom.net

Marie Foley

Solo Exhibitions

Group Exhibitions