04 April – 09 May 2020

Image © Jac Ball, 'Shower scene 6', 2019

Jac Ball has been selected to represent the Perth Centre for Photography at Rotterdam Photo in 2020 with the work, PDA.

In PDA, photographic and material processes, repetitive performances and saturated colour are used to explore the pleasures and possibilities of queer self-assemblage and intimacy. The images are accumulative and fragmented, playful and makeshift.

The Artist uses collage as both a concept and material method. Collage can be messy and multiple, and it can reference to loss, clutter, repetition, and contradiction. It can invite embellishment, performative fictions, haphazard narrative structures, and questions of authenticity. These provisional processes reflect the everyday qualities of self-making. They also overlap with dilemmas of queer representation.

PDA includes staged performances for the camera, as well as casual performances that focus on intimacy and routine. Many images converse with ideas of gender and queerness through non-figurative content. PDA also references camp aesthetics, humour, unapologetic performances, and celebrations of self-making in trans and non-binary self-generated imagery online.

Jac Ball is a PhD candidate at Curtin University, Western Australia and has been professionally exhibiting for ten years. Significant group shows include Looking but not seeing at the Benalla Art Gallery in 2018, HERE&NOW17 at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery UWA, New Matter: Recent forms of Photography at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2016, Invisible Genres at John Curtin Gallery in 2016, Transcendental at Galerie Pavolva in Berlin in 2014, Dusk to Dark at the Queensland Centre for Photography and the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery in 2014, the prestigious Primavera exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney in 2013, and Remix at the Art Gallery of WA in 2011. Their artworks can be found in the collections of the Art Gallery of NSW, Art Gallery of WA, University of WA, Murdoch University, Wesfamers, Kerry Stokes Collection, North Metro TAFE and Artbank. This is their seventh solo exhibition.

About Rotterdam Photo

Rotterdam Photo is an annual photo manifestation that takes place during Art Rotterdam Week, where art lovers will have the opportunity to visit numerous art and design events. Located at Deliplein in the Katendrecht district the event celebrates the wide spectrum of photography as it presents itself in our contemporary image culture. Together with the exhibitions at the Nederlands Fotomuseum and the fine art photography fair Haute Photographie, the ‘Kop van Zuid’ transforms into the one stop hub for photography fans, from 6 till 09 February 2020.