Biography
Nora Fok (b. Hong Kong 1953) left school at 12 to work in a factory assembling toys and computer components and then studied graphisc design. She came to England to study at 3D Design course studying wood, metal, ceramics and plastics at Brighton Polytechnic which led her into jewellery design. She was inspired by Caroline Broadhead and Susannah Heron -important figures in the then emerging New Jewellery Movement which was about pushing the boundaries of jewellery making by exploring and using different non- traditional / nonprecious materials such as resin, fibre glass, acrylic and, particularly, dyed nylon fishing line. Fok married the artist and lecturer Frank Hills in 1984. She had her first solo exhibition Galaxies at the Hove Museum & Art Gallery in 1997. Her work is in UK and international collections; the Conetmpoary Art Socoiety has donated her works to The Atkinson, Southport and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
In 2004 she did a workshop at the Massachusetts College of Art and visited the Glass Flower exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History which resulted in her collection Nylon Botanicus. Fok was shortlisted for the Jerwood Applied Arts prize in 2007 and was one of the Jerwood prize winners in 2010. Most recent work was exhibited at The Mint Museum North Carolina (2015) as part of the exhibition Body Embellishment. It is made from 'Linlon' Fok’s term for a mixture of nylon and linen threads that she has developed with a grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. She held master class workshops and talks at Mint Museum and has also taught at Brighton University.
