Sharon Lloyd

Biography

Sharon studied at Chelsea School of Art and was employed as a textile designer for over 10 years working in London, New York and Paris before returning to higher education to achieve a Distinction in MA Fashion Textiles and European PgDip in Textiles and Fashion Marketing at Winchester School of Art.

Cosmetic application is often considered to be frivolous, conformist, materialist, anti-feminist, transgressive and a key role in self- expression. Sharon’s current teaching and research interests centre on issues relating to the body, identity, fashion and cosmetic delineation, which has been the focus for a variety of articles and conference papers. Her identification of the representations of beauty, size, age and ethnicity formulated by the media and fashion industry has led her to seek critical debate on the nature of transgression within fashion, celebrity, cosmetics and beauty. She writes on cosmetic subcultures and debates surrounding transgressing visual boundaries using a poststructuralist and feminist approach.

In 2015 she participated in an international group exhibition titled To Shanghai with Love at the Shanghai Institute of Technology, China. In 2013 she contributed to a multi-disciplinary research project titled Beauty by Design: Fashioning the Renaissance, creating a collaborative work Triptych, made in response to Paris Bordone’s Venetian Women at their Toilet. This culminated in a major exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in November 2014, and a lecture presented by Sharon and fellow collaborator Paul Hodgson, that closed the exhibition in 2015, titled Holding up a Mirror to Bordone’s Women.

As a practitioner her aim is to develop projects that integrate new and old technologies and seek informed ways to approach design and the relationship between creative practices and advanced technology used by the cosmetic body.