Ouroboros
Ben Sanderson
Ben Sanderson's new solo exhibition opens at MIRROR in Jan 2024. Join us for the opening event on Thursday 18 Jan from 5-7:30pm.
The exhibition consists of several wall-like works that are composed together to create temporary rooms within the gallery. The walls are created by reusing old paintings in various states: primed and painted, dyed, cropped and quilted back together again, pulped and pressed into rag paper. They have a more deliberate ‘front’ and a more accidental ‘back’, each playing a role in two different spaces. They hold smaller paintings, embedded and framed, a process that has involved sifting, sorting and reactivating a decade of old work.
‘The fronts are where most of my energy goes. Top-stitched and carefully placed blocks of colour fall into pattern, often punctuated by smaller paintings. Paintings have gone back to their material nature. The selected ones are pruned and arranged within their borders, walls of collaged thought’.
Ben Sanderson
‘The backs are the closest I have got to a fully improvised way of working; they surprise me every time. It’s like crawling through a hedge. They hold all the waste subconscious thoughts. They are the bits I don’t want to see or the bits I don’t know what to do with. Often the fronts are trying to clear space in my mind or create less in the room, but the backs aren’t planned for. The blank areas on the front are often found on the backs of old paintings. It’s getting a bit confusing now, as the fronts are often made from old backs and the backs are made from old fronts’.
Ben Sanderson
Ben Sanderson is an artist based at CAST in Cornwall. Ben is one of the two artists selected for The South West Showcase 2024. SWS is a recurring project, established by MIRROR in 2013 as a strategic response to the lack of talent development and professional exhibition opportunities for artists based in the region. The showcase aims to support contemporary artists working and living in the South West through a year-long programme of mentoring and support with an exhibition outcome, presenting a long-term commitment to profiling and supporting the practices of artists in this region.
