Mike Ballard

‘Unfurl yourselves under my banner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes’
Mark Twain, c.1869.

The term guttersnipe was first coined in the 19th Century, a portmanteau of a street gutter and the common bird snipe, and was used as a derogatory term by writers of the era to describe young outcasts on the street.

Ballard’s research takes the form of city-wide wanderings, scavenging materials he finds in order to capture the elements and remains of an environment in perpetual change. Whatever Ballard might come by - discarded building materials, site hoardings, the ripped and weathered stickers and posters from illicit advertising, scaffolding netting; he uses to capture the essence of this environment in flux.

As an artist living in London, Ballard is surrounded by the wave of gentrification flooding the city and is a spectator of the everyday urban environment in a constant state of change. Ballard conveys the weight of this urban visual noise by using the cityscape itself as his primary source of materials, immortalizing the fabric of the city and giving new life to the often ignored.

For his forthcoming show at The Bomb Factory Art foundation, Ballard will be showing his most ambitious sculpture to date. Ballard’s new piece, responding to the architecture of the space, is constructed from wooden building site hoardings that he has sourced from various locations across the city.

Alongside this monumental piece, Ballard will be exhibiting a series of new paintings and installation pieces.