jacqueline ball

room service

16 april - 16 may 2015

There has been a noticeable thematic shift in Jacqueline Ball's photographs over the past two years, resulting in a new series of works that are powerful and confronting, yet they still remain compellingly beautiful.

These are artworks that are filled with perceptual intrigue. Hints of body parts, figures, strange sculptural forms and room interiors combine to create unsettling images where manipulated scale and surfaces confuse the eye.

In a recent artist statement Jacqueline wrote; "This is the most honest work I've ever made. In the past, most things I made (in the form of photographed constructions) were sublimations of a desire for a more viscerally involved relationship with the people and spaces around me. However, I'm now crafting force, desire and more intense realities in my daily life. A part of this shift has been a rethinking of my own history in photos, and of what the camera and its images mean to me, and how they have shaped me."

The works in Room Service span an eight year period and most have been reworked. Many were printed and then re-photographed using a long exposure and adding layers to the surface, reflecting images into each other, or adding her own body and objects. Jacqueline describes this process as a "repetition of both cutting and adding information, I'm recording a life and crafting a life at the same time. I'm also communicating an edited version of that life as I figure out what to illustrate or abstract, what to share or keep private."

Jacqueline is intrigued by the space she refers to as 'the slippage', that strange territory between what could have happened but didn't, between desire and physicality, in the potentiality of people, objects and situations. In this 'tension' that infuses the works in Room Service a narrative unfolds. These are images that document moments of deep intimacy, arousal, vulnerability and intensity. The title of the exhibition comes from a night visit from an unexpectedly young night manager of a hotel, and of an encounter that might have happened with him, but didn't. She imagines "him entering the space that was and wasn't mine and the porosity sparking both anxiety and arousal. It's that gap between closing things down and opening things up, too much either way can be troublesome, but it's in feeling that tension as you move between them, as anxiety ridden as it may be, that is pretty damn exciting."

Jacqueline is currently undertaking her PhD at Curtin University. She was included in the prestigious Primavera exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney in 2013, Remix at the Art Gallery of WA in 2011 and Transcendental at Galerie Pavolva in Berlin in 2014. Her works can be found in the collections of the Art Gallery of NSW, Art Gallery of WA, University of WA, the Kerry Stokes Collection and Artbank.

 

 

*please note:
sizes and prices listed are for framed works.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

hallway, latex edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 77.5 x 52.5cm 2015 $1,200	lying still, light bleed edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 62.5 x 42.5cm 2015 $900 sold 1/5
stalactite anxiety, vertical display edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 77.5 x 52.5cm 2015 $1,200	heat lamp edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 62.5 x 49.5cm 2015 $900
skylight, double cave edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 62.5 x 42.5cm 2015 $900	night manager crush edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 62.5 x 40.5cm 2015 $900 sold 1/5
back home, wet checks edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 77.5 x 52.5cm 2015 $1,200 sold 1/5	subduction, slow leak edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 92.5 x 60.5cm 2015 $1,500 sold 1/5, 2/5
hoping she texts edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 44.5 x 62.5cm 2015 $900	microgravity edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 92.5 x 62.5cm 2015 $1,500 sold 1/5, 2/5
29th birthday, groyne near villa edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 62.5 x 47.5cm 2015 $900	oil slick, soft thighs edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 77.5 x 52.5cm 2015 $1,200
bees, night swim edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 62.5 x 45.5cm 2015 $900 sold 1/5	wind chill edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 92.5 x 58.5cm 2015 $1,500 sold 1/5
miss tim's limo edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 62.5 x 42.5cm 2015 $900 sold 1/5	in love with a pipe breather edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 62.5 x 39.5cm 2015 $900
navigator edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 62.5 x 40.5cm 2015 $900 sold 1/5	hourglass edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 63 x 43cm 2015 $900
public monument, private moment edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 77.5 x 55.5cm 2015 $1,200	regional hospital, dense sky edition 1/5 inkjet print on canson rag photographique 310gsm 92.5 x 65.5cm 2015 $1,500 sold 1/5