An Unspoken Arrangement - An interview with Alex Ball

An Unspoken Arrangement - An interview with Alex Ball

02 November, 2010
by: Tom Jeffreys

Tom Jeffreys speaks to contemporary artist Alex Ball ahead of his début solo show at The Arts Gallery.

Reading art in terms of the personality or life or pronouncements of the artist is an oft-misleading, frequently facile approach. The same may be said for the alternative – art is never just a series of decodable references to 'life'. This assumption of some kind of life-art continuum leads largely to irrelevant and uninteresting questions, like whether Shakespeare's sonnets were addressed to a man, whether Morrissey is a racist, or whether Schiele was a paedophile.

However (and there's always a however) in the case of contemporary artist Alex Ball, currently undertaking his MA at The Slade, it's a strategy with some justification. We're in a bustling Hoxton pub along with curator Justin Hammond to discuss Alex's forthcoming début solo show at the recently reopened Arts Gallery. An Unspoken Arrangement consists of eight new oil paintings on linen, accompanied by a handmade book in an edition of just ten.

Immediately the similarities between the art and the artist are apparent. Just as Alex is softly spoken but quietly assured, choosing his words with thought and precision, so his small-scale oil paintings are the unshowy products of a technical virtuoso – full of carefully unreadable forms, darkness, humour and a sort of self-sufficiency that's both serene and startling.

I first came across Alex's work back in 2008 when, a year after graduating from Central St Martins, he won the Catlin Art Prize which Justin also curates. I was struck immediately by the level of skill involved. But anyone can learn a craft – these images display a thoughtfulness, a seductive visual language that taunts and suggests and thwarts. “I want my work to be highly symbolic,” Alex explains, “but for the symbolism not to be at all definite. So I try to use images that are too unstable to signify anything very definitely.”

But for the exhibition at The Arts Gallery Alex is moving away from the dark anonymity of these early works, as he explains: “I tried to shift away from macabre overtones of seriousness to something lighter, but equally strange. I don't mind if they have ridiculous, Freudian connotations – that's kind of more interesting to me.”

“The new images are not as sharp or delineated,” Alex continues. “Working on linen makes it a lot softer, which is something I was playing with. A lot of the images describe objects which maybe imply movement or softness of texture in themselves. There's a range of big, soft, shapes – undefinable as food or maybe furniture or something.”

I wonder how much of a conscious process this is, and Alex's response is interesting; “Often,” he says, “I look at purely formal relationships between things. The flow, and merging of objects happens very naturally and almost subconsciously. I think that unconscious quality comes through in the images themselves: I deliberately don't think about what they mean too much. I don't want them to become too self-conscious.”

And yet on the other hand, Alex is also loathe to ally himself with idea of the artist as hermetically sealed creative force: “I think in art school there's often an opinion, which slightly irritates me, that an artist doesn't want to think about an audience – they just have to 'get' it. But it just becomes a bit too indulgent and self-referential and I don't really relate to that way of working. I find it exciting to think that my work might create a specific response in a viewer.”

So what kind of response does Alex expect from this exhibition? “I'm quite nervous about how they'll be read,” he admits, “because they're maybe less immediate. I've pushed the oddness of the images as far as they can go – I'm worried maybe they're a bit too introverted or confused. I'm hoping the references will come out, through the titles and the press release – that'll draw them out.”

It's kind of funny and refreshing to hear an artist worry about what will or won't come out. And it echoes my own worry – that amid the rising Friday evening chatter, my poor dictaphone won't be able to pick up Alex's voice. I needn't have worried though – listening back, his quiet, detailed responses cut crisply through the background noise. In exactly the same way, I think to myself, as his paintings cut with oscillating precision through the mind's murkiness, to lodge there, and lurk.

Alex Ball – An Unspoken Arrangement is at The Arts Gallery from 11th November until 18th December 2010.

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Tom Jeffreys