• Sarah Ball, Portraits

    6 October 2020 - 6 November 2020
  • Ben Hunter is pleased to present Portraits, a solo presentation of recent paintings by British artist Sarah Ball (b.1965), the inaugural exhibition in the gallery’s new space at 44 Duke Street St James’s. 

     

    Ball draws on a range of found source materials in order to create her meticulously rendered portraits; for this particular suite of works she has gathered imagery collected from social media platforms. Carefully selecting subjects with ambiguous narratives, Ball’s intimate portraits are set starkly against muted backgrounds. Key features are captured with intensity; deep pooling eyes are set against smooth, luminescent skin, while distinctive accessories are set against areas of flatly rendered colour. 

     

    The resulting images — strangers recontextualised from the blank void of social media — challenge us to rethink our increasingly digital lives and encouraging us to revel in the eternal immediacy of painting. 

     


     

    Sarah Ball studied at Newport Art College in the early 1980s and completed an MFA at Bath Spa University in 2005. She has exhibited widely, including at The Royal Academy, Somerset House and The Victoria and Albert Museum. Ball’s works are included in the permanent collections of the Kistefos Museum, the British Museum and the Rachofsky Collection.