Photographer and artist Roger Ballen will be in Australia next month for his first major Sydney exhibition.
Staged to coincide with the 20th Biennale of Sydney, Roger Ballen’s Theatre of the Mind opens at the Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) on March 15 with a provocative exhibition of 75 contemporary works created by the artist over the last two decades.
Professor Colin Rhodes, Dean of the University of Sydney’s contemporary art school and curator of the exhibition, said: "For a long time Roger Ballen's photography has trodden a path where others are too timid to tread, toying with our innermost dreams, nightmares and desires. The raw, atmospheric exhibition spaces at Sydney College of the Arts [the site of the former Rozelle Psychiatric Hospital] are the ideal setting to articulate this core aspect of Ballen’s work."
Born in New York in 1950, Ballen has lived in Johannesburg since the 1970s. His work as a geologist took him across the countryside and led him to explore, through the camera lens, the smaller South African towns. His early photographs of the hidden lives of people living on the fringes of society made considerable impact, receiving acclaim from American writer and filmmaker Susan Sontag among others.
Integrating black-and-white film photography, drawing, painting and installation Ballen's peculiar and somewhat shocking imagery takes viewers on a journey into the recesses of Ballen's mind.
The Sydney exhibition, at the SCA's Balmain campus on the site of the old Rozelle psychiatric hospital, will include a new installation work by Ballen in response to the site’s mental health history.
The show includes Ballen’s award-winning music video I Fink U Freeky (2012) by South African rap-rave group Die Antwoord (see below), which has received over 77 million views on YouTube, and his video works Outland and Asylum of the Birds.
Ballen will present a public talk in Sydney at SCA on 9 March, ahead of the official opening of his Sydney exhibition on Tuesday 15 March.
Roger Ballen’s Theatre of the Mind is showing at SCA Galleries from 16 March to 30 April 2016. A 96-page book will accompany the exhibition featuring Ballen’s photography and an essay by Professor Rhodes.
What: Roger Ballen’s Theatre of the Mind When: 16 March-30 April 2016 (official opening 15 March, 6-8pm; Roger Ballen Art Talk on 9 March, 1pm) Hours: Mon-Fri 11am-5pm; Sat 11am-4pm. Closed Sun. Where: SCA Galleries, Sydney College of the Arts (University of Sydney), Kirkbride Way, off Balmain Road, Lilyfield (enter opposite Cecily Street). Cost: Free
Roger Ballen, Caged (Asylum of the Birds), 2011, archival inkjet print on paper. Courtesy the artist.
Roger Ballen, Untitled [7157], 2015. Image courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery.
Roger Ballen, Twirling Wires, 2001. Image courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery.
