Mike Ballard
Lives and works in London. Contact
Mike Ballard draws upon a rich intersection of subcultural influences, producing works that activate layered cultural histories whilst exploring how identity and belonging are formed, negotiated, and contested. His practice engages with questions of authority, ownership, and authorship, examining who has the right to occupy space, to leave a trace, and to assert visibility.
Before undertaking formal study, Ballard worked as a telecoms engineer, later enrolling on the MA at Central Saint Martins 2007. However, his entry into art began much earlier through an immersion in graffiti culture during his youth. This environment provided both a point of access into creative practice and a framework for exploring identity and belonging. Graffiti functioned as a space of freedom and resistance, offering an escape from the constraints of everyday life and enabling extensive travel beyond the familiar.
During this formative period, Ballard became deeply influenced by subcultures, drawn to their capacity for self-definition through alternative visual and sonic languages. These experiences fostered an understanding of how marginal or oppositional cultures construct meaning outside dominant narratives, shaping his sensitivity to the politics of visibility and expression.
The act of mark-making, in this context, became inseparable from questions of presence, anonymity, and the instability of authorship. This personal trajectory, combined with an awareness of broader sociocultural concerns around belonging and identity, informs Ballad's engagement with the psychological and spatial dynamics of his work.
His practice is articulated through layered surfaces that are built, disrupted, and reconfigured, often suggesting fragments of coded or transient communication. Processes of accumulation and erasure operate simultaneously, producing works that resist fixed interpretation and instead foreground ambiguity and flux.
The convergence of these seemingly disparate influences enables Ballard to expand his investigation into alternative forms of expression, whilst addressing the complexities of authorship, ownership, and control.
Through this, his work reflects on the conditions of contemporary experience, where identities are constructed through overlapping histories and where meaning remains in a continual state of negotiation.
Solo exhibitions
Shadow Ban Shtager SHCH, London January 2024
Territorial Gestures OHSH projects, London August 2022
Throw your house out the window (duo show with Michael Weiskoppel) Tick Tack, Antwerp November 2021
Gutter Snipe The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London Sept 2019
Adapt to the collapse Union Gallery, London November 2018
Where the concrete meets the glass The Silver building, Silvertown London August 2018
Laying in the cut KARST, Plymouth end of residency presentation May 2018
If Destroyed Even More True Block Madrid, Madrid November 2016
Capital Slang Angus-Hughes Gallaery. London. June 2016
Advertising The Invisible The Residence Gallery. London. December 2013
I.D.S.T Block 336. London. June 2012.
The Ultra Nomadic Def Smith Cycle Edel Assanti project space. London.March 2011
Whose coat is that jacket you're wearing Walkers Tailor. London October 2010
The All of everything The Arts Gallery. London December 2009.
Where you end, I begin. Hertford road Warehouse. London November 2008
The Good Fight Three Colts Gallery, Bethnal Green London 2005
Selected group exhibitions
Bold & Gritty Stedelijke Museum Schiedam Curated by Opperclaes May 2025
Street Space Banger Kunsthalle Recklinghausen curated by Tick Tack Aug 2024
STANZA (Duo show with Julia De Ruvo) The Split Gallery London May 2024
Studio Response IV Saatchi Gallery London 2023
Brut Reverie Contemporary Clusters Rome September 2023
Checkmate OHSH projects London May 2023
Post Vandalism Omni Gallery London September 2022
hf. Asylum Studios suffolk May 2022
Filth Thames side studios London April 2022
GlasHard Stedelijk Museum Schiedam October 2021
The Factory Project London October 2021
Summer Exhibition Royal Academy London Sept 2021
Sculpture In The City 10th/11th Edition London until April 2023
Recreational Grounds Thameside Gallery London May 2021
Economy of Errors OHSH projects London April 2021
Summer Exhibition Royal Academy London Oct 2020
Index, World Unit ,London February 2020
Sugar Mountain, The Silver Building London September 2019
Recreational Grounds Wendover estate carpark, London July 2018
Summer Exhibition Royal Academy London June 2018
Slippage Von Goetz Art London April 2018
In Residence Griffin Gallery London July 2017
Transient Space Prafin Gallery London July 2017
Venturing Beyond. Somerset House London, March 2016
Earth is our Radio. KARST Plymouth, Feb 2016
Mapping the city Somerset house, London Jan 2015
Gone with the wind. Raven Row.London June 2011
The Twilight Suite Louise Boulin Institute London. July 2008
Future Map The Arts Gallery, Davies St. London December 2007
Into The Frying Pan Espace Uhoda, Liege Belgium. September 2007
Identikit Temporary Contemporary, Deptford London. February 2006
Education.
M.A Fine Art Central Saint Martins College London. 2005-07
Residencies/Awards
Jack Goldhill Sculpture award RA summer exhibition 2020
Member of Royal Society of Sculptors 2019
KARST GalleryStudio 2 Residency May 2018
Untapped Residency Cyprus January 2018
Griffin Gallery project based residency May 2017
Penthouse residency, Brussels March 2016
Bethnal Green Nature Reserve Billboard project Jan 2015
Hermes Wanderland-Saatchi Gallery May 2015
Canals project residency Sao Paulo Brasil- Dec 2013
