Millennium is proud to present ‘Accused’ by Sarah Ball, taking place from 25th May until 19th June.
This solo exhibition showcases intimate and diminutive portrait paintings recording the faces of the ‘Accused’. The exhibition uses as its starting point police archive photographs from the Victorian Era through to 1960’s.
The 19th Century physiognomy was a widely explored, and believed, notion that there was a connection between an individual’s outward appearance and their inner character, in essence good people ‘looked good’ and bad people ‘looked bad’. It was indeed felt by some that certain facial features belonged to those more inclined to commit crimes. Police photographs would therefore have supplemented pathological investigations into crime and criminals. Sarah Ball’s paintings loosely explore this idea – with titles such as ‘Vagrant’, ‘Anarchist’ and ‘Gang Member’ we are made aware of the offence each individual committed, but would we be able to tell otherwise?
As Ball states ‘I am interested in the act of translation; from the apparent certainty of the photographic record to the malleable quality of paint, my work calls into question history, memory and story.’ The resultant exhibition is a very ‘human’ portrait. A portrait of the accuser as much as the accused.
Since completing an MFA at Bath Spa University in 2005, Ball has exhibited widely and has been shortlisted for various prizes including the University of Glamorgan Purchase Prize in 2006 and 2008, the Welsh artist of the year 2007 and 2009, and the Threadneedle Prize in 2009.
General opening hours – Monday to Saturday, 10am – 5pm
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