For their first solo exhibition at PICA, Ball addresses the full space of the West End Gallery with large and small, figural and abstract images layered and accompanied by a series of sculptural works made in situ. These intimate and ambitiously scaled works bring together references from a range of time periods and contexts, combining fragmented bodies, interrupted sequences and abstract forms to reflect a resistance against the fixity and finality of the image.

Ball’s practice draws on an extensive digital archive, moving between analogue and digital processes as they alter the scale and texture of images. Using techniques of layering, cutting, cropping, enlarging, printing and re-photographing, their compositions contain visible seams, scratches and stains on brilliantly hued and colour-saturated surfaces. Ball embraces the ‘messiness’ afforded by these processes to ‘complicate, challenge, bring playfulness and pleasure to trans photographic representations in art spaces.’

About the Artist
Born in NSW, Jack Ball completed a PhD at Curtin University in 2021 and is currently living on Gadigal and Wangak 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 Ireland and the Sillanpää Art Residency in Finland.

Jack Ball is represented by sweet pea gallery, Boorloo, Perth.