Jack Ball, Heavy Grit at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boorloo / Perth

“Heavy Grit” by Jack Ball, curated by Sarah Wall, at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boorloo / Perth, 25/10/2024 – 22/12/2024.

Jack Ball is known for their sprawling photographic installations that explore themes of queer intimacy and desire using collage – a method of thinking and working that involves undoing and remaking to create new forms. Ball draws on the possibilities of abstraction to create works that resist easy reading and instead exalt ambiguous, slippery states. For their first solo exhibition at PICA, Ball addresses the full space of the West End Gallery with multiple images arranged across the walls and a series of sculptural works made in situ. The title, Heavy grit, alludes to underlying sensations and tensions at the core of this new body of work. Within the installation, photographs of materials held in the collection of the Australian Queer Archive appear alongside recent images documenting Ball’s studio constructions and moments of everyday life. The artist’s work in the archives explores fragments and glimpses of trans histories and desires through sensory and material connections. Using techniques of layering, cutting, cropping, enlarging, printing and re-photographing, their compositions contain visible seams, scratches and stains. These arrangements invite an associative viewing experience, drawing entangled connections while also leaving gaps for viewers to relate their own speculative imaginings. Jack Ball is a New South Wales–born artist who has completed a PhD at Curtin University in 2021 and is currently living on Gadigal and Wangal Country (Sydney). Ball’s artistic practice critically engages with the politics and aesthetics of mess and collage as a framework for exploring trans and queer photographic representation. Ball’s recent solo exhibitions include Tight Crop at Sydenham International (2023) and Wind Chill at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth (2021), as well group exhibitions the pleasurable, the illegible, the multiple, the mundane at Artspace, Sydney (2021) and Love in Bright Landscapes at PICA (2021). They have participated in studio residencies at PICA, SIM in Iceland and the Sillanpää Art Residency in Finland. Jack Ball is represented by sweet pea gallery, Boorloo, Perth.