Roger Ballen
Video frame from Asylum of the Birds (2014) featuring Roger Ballen
Roger Ballen's Theatre of the Mind exhibition at SCA Galleries: the site-specific Theatre of Darkness
From the site-specific Theatre of Darkness
Roger Ballen's Theatre of the Mind at SCA Galleries: opening night
Roger Ballen's Theatre of the Mind at SCA Galleries: opening night
Roger Ballen's Theatre of the Mind at SCA Galleries
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ROGER BALLEN'S THEATRE OF THE MIND book / shop The exhibition In 2016, American-born, South African self taught photographic artist, Roger Ballen spent time in Australia for his exhibition Roger Ballen's Theatre of the Mind. Curated by Professor Colin Rhodes for the SCA Galleries, The University of Sydney, the exhibition was conceived as a series of 'theatres': Theatre of the Absurd, Theatre of the Real and Unreal, Theatre of the Hidden, Forbidden Theatre and Theatre of the Mind. Three videos were also screened: I Fink U Freeky, Die Antwoord (2012); Roger Ballen's Asylum of the Birds (2014); and Roger Ballen's Outland (2015). And Ballen worked with SCA students to create installations within the underground cells of the former Rozelle psychiatric hospital in Callan Park to form the site-specific Theatre of Darkness. The exhibition was staged to coincide with the 20th Biennale of Sydney. Said Rhodes in 2016: "I believe that Ballen's photographs are made and remade through the active participation of viewers. Theatre, then, is as much a metaphor for living a life in which we are both audience and participant as it is for the formalised construction of an event. In his work, Ballen produces visual reports of psychological realities. His photographs are emphatically engaged objects without critical distance. Though they are exquisitely constructed as form, viewers are dragged into them, so to speak. They are an encounter." In 2017, Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery in partnership with Tauranga Art Gallery toured Roger Ballen's Theatre of the Mind. The exhibition was Ballen's first solo exhibition in New Zealand and was part of the Auckland Festival of Photography 2017 programme. "The issue of insanity versus what society refers to as normality has been a debate in my own mind for decades" - Roger Ballen
Media New Zealand 2017 Art News New Zealand, Winter 2017, pp.84-87: 'Within the ballenesque' by Colin Rhodes - Roger Ballen's strange, psychological scene-scapes, with their immersive black-and-white aesthetic, are a powerful force in contemporary photography. Ballen's work is always compulsive viewing... [read more] Waitakere Contemporary Gallery: Roger Ballen is one of the most important photographers of his generation... [read more] Sydney 2016 Art Guide: 'In conversation with Roger Ballen' by Tracey Clement - Photographer Roger Ballen is known for his striking black and white compositions: meticulously staged tableaux shot in derelict buildings around Johannesburg, South Africa... [read more] ArtsHub: 'I think you're freaky but I like it a lot' by Gina Fairley, 7 April 2016 - Roger Ballen proves that creativity can be inspired by the most diverse background... [read more] Books and Arts, Radio National: Birds, wires, stylised limbs and odd interiors all inhabit the dark theatrical world Roger Ballen creates in his Photography. In this interview with with Michael Cathcart, the artist talks candidly about his work... [listen] Creators, VICE: 'Die Antwoord's I Fink U Freeky Director Roger Ballen Releases Terrifying Two-Minute Horror Film' by Katherine Gillespie - Roger Ballen did not arrive in Sydney with the intention of making a film. The Johannesburg-based photographer, who you might also know as... [read more] John McDonald (SMH column): 'Headless children and figures from a horror movie are Roger Ballen's works of art' - In the earliest maps of the world cartographers would fill the gaps in their knowledge with pictures of men with their faces in their chests, or a creature using one gigantic foot as an umbrella. An inscription would read: "Here be monsters". This could serve as the title of any exhibition by Roger Ballen, although the unknown territory is not geographical, but within the mind... [read more] Roger Ballen: A psychological thriller set in a zone between sanity and insanity, the film takes Ballen's work to the next level... [watch] The Saturday Paper: 'Roger Ballen's lens a dark mirror' by Richard Cooke - Photographer Roger Ballen's theatrical depictions of Johannesburg's marginalised white poor reflect a universal helplessness... [read more] Sydney Morning Herald: According to the South African photographer, 'scary' is not something to be avoided but to be embraced as a form of truth... [watch]; "Everybody is alone, everybody is an outsider in my personal opinion," says Ballen. "Everybody is trying to cope with their identity and copy with the reality around them. These are universal existential issues..." [read more] * * * The publication Roger Ballen's Theatre of the Mind by Colin Rhodes was published by STOARC on the occasion of the exhibition. As Rhodes says, "Ballen's processes do not much reflect received ideas of what photographers do. As an artist he is centrally engaged in a practice that flows primarily from the inside out." Click here to preview Roger Ballen's Theatre of the Mind by Colin Rhodes. To purchase your copy, visit our store here. |