Sarah BALL

Sarah BALL
1965

Sarah Ball was born in Rotherham, South Yorkshire and studied Illustration at Newport Art College. Subsequently she obtained a Master of Fine Arts from Bath Spa University. She moved to Wales in 1996 but since 2015 has been living near Penzance.

Her meticulously rendered portraits explore themes of gender and identity. Demonstrating an acute sensitivity to the psyche of her subjects, she emphasises physical characteristics that define how we outwardly portray ourselves to the world. Ball uses source material such as newspaper cuttings, archival photographs and social media to inform her portraits. Often depicting people who celebrate self-expression and contest traditional binary norms, Ball highlights physiognomy, hairstyles, clothes, jewellery and make-up that reveal the idiosyncrasies of her anonymous, often unknowing sitters. Set against flat planes of colour and confined within closely cropped compositions, the artist lends the people within her work a surreal, timeless quality by denying the viewer any form of narrative about their identity.

Sarah Ball is represented by the Stephen Friedman Gallery in London. Her work has been shown extensively in London and the USA.

media

Painting

exhibitions

Solo shows:

2012: 'Accused', Millennium Gallery, St Ives

2013: 'Accused Part II', Millennium Gallery, St Ives

2015: 'Immigrants', Millennium Gallery, St Ives, and Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall

2017: 'Bertillon', Anima Mundi, St Ives (Aug)

2019: 'Themself', Anima Mundi, St Ives (26 July-6 Sept)

Group shows:

2020: 'Ode to a Nightingale', Anima Mundi, St Ives

2021: Friend Zone, Half Gallery, New York

2022: Space for Imaginative Actions, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany