About Sarah Ball
Born in Yorkshire, UK, in 1965, Sarah Ball studied at Newport Art College in the early 1980s and received her MFA from Bath Spa University in 2005. Her meticulously rendered portraits explore themes of gender and identity. Demonstrating an acute sensitivity to the psyches of her subjects, she emphasizes physical characteristics that define how we outwardly portray ourselves to the world. Ball uses source materials such as newspaper cuttings, archival photographs, and social media to inform her portraits. Often depicting people who celebrate self-expression and contest gender norms, Ball highlights physiognomy, hairstyles, clothes, jewelry, and make-up that reveal the idiosyncrasies of her sitters. By setting her subjects against flat planes of color and confining them within closely cropped compositions, the artist lends the people within her work a surreal, timeless quality by denying the viewer any form of narrative about their identities.
Ball has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions worldwide. In 2025, she will have a solo exhibition at Longlati Foundation, Shanghai. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the British Museum, London; Grace Museum, Abilene, Texas; Hepworth Wakefield, UK; Kistefos Museum, Norway; Long Museum, Shanghai; and the Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, Texas, among others. She lives and works in Cornwall, UK.
Artists in Conversation
Join us for lively and inspiring conversations with some of today’s most notable artists. “Artists in Conversation” brings together curators and artists to discuss artistic practices and insights into their work.
This program is presented through the generosity of the Terry F. Green 1969 Fund for British Art and Culture.
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Top image
Sarah Ball Studio, 2023. Photo by Alban Roinard.
