Mike Ballard
ARTIST INFO
Location
London, United Kingdom
TYPICAL Mediums
Steel, Found Timber, Concrete
BIO
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.
- https://mikeballard.co.uk/info
