Mike Ballard works across numerous visual media- collage, painting, installation and sculpture- along with film and music. He aims to challenge the viewers perception of time and value.
Inspired by graffiti art and Hip-Hop music, both of which he has been producing since the mid-80s. Ballard explores the connections between audio and visual forms. Sampling sounds and re-assembling discarded audio equipment in to sculptures in antique form. He challenges the fragility on technology, creating bridges between old and new worlds.
Within his work one medium becomes animated by another, creating appropriated hybrids. Found objects become electrified, painting films and films about painting, battle between function and aesthetic value, each gaining a new status that questions the value of everything.
Assembling imagery from art history books and popular culture, Ballards collages are then represented as illuminated signs, suggesting the possibility of a reconfigured time.
Ballards paintings and prints challenge structures of perception, presenting powerful visions close to an hallucinogenic experience. This experience makes us question whether the world we see when we are "straight" is, in fact, the real world; or is it somewhere outside, uncertain, mediated and not to be trusted?
INFO
- Name: Mike Ballard
- Country:
- Website: www.mikeballard.co.uk
- Discipline: FINE_ARTIST
