Mike Ballard
b. 1972, United Kingdom
Mike Ballard
Born 1972 Lives and works in London
The entropic state of the city is found in the margins, in the unmaintained and uninhabited places, Ballards eye is drawn to the detritus, the residue and the accidental layering of signs and symbols of paints, varnish and stickers, be they instruction or advert. His paintings are laced with the formal translation of these processes using - photography, photocopy, adhesion, saturation, abrasion and addition. In the development of this work he is not simply recreating a found image, he is making a visual commentary on the forces of urbanity that negate, displace and corrode.
Mike draws from a wealth of archival material and ephemera to create contemporary paintings, sculptures and installations that are imbued with not only a rich personal history but also the ethos and aesthetics of an unconventional, nonconformist art upbringing.
In Ballards ongoing series of sculptures made from found hoardings, the medium very much is the message. Their facades retain all the marks of a life lived on the street, exposed to the elements, the wants of site managers and the whims of graffiti writers. Every scratch, stain, scuff, speck and screw hole evidence of their service, their time spent standing as sentinels of a site, as barriers separating public from private. Mike embraces and endorses each imperfection, imposing little to no intervention aside from amputating any areas deemed irreparably damp or insect-infested.
Running alongside the function of the hoardings as a threshold of ownership is a discourse on the control and censorship of identity in the urban environment. The painted wood as body that is at once a passive recording surface and a signifier of imminent change.