Ballardian

Ballard’s writing has a strong connection to visual art. It informed his work and led to him befriending some of the leading artists of his time, while in turn his work has influenced today’s crop. As Ben Austwick reports, the exhibition Crash: Homage to J.G. Ballard represent these diverse strands in a haphazard, yet always interesting fashion.

Press release for the Gagosian Gallery exhibition “Crash,” a major group exhibition opening on 11 February 2010, which takes its title from the famous novel by JG Ballard.

Reprints of three book reviews originally published elsewhere. The reviews discuss The BLDGBLOG Book (2009) by Geoff Manaugh, City Visions: The Work of Iain Sinclair (2007), edited by Robert Bond and Jenny Bavidge, and JG Ballard’s Surrealist Imagination: Spectacular Authorship (2009) by Jeannette Baxter.

The aesthetic of the advertisement appears again and again in J.G. Ballard’s work. Here, Rick McGrath explores Ballard’s fascination with the structure of advertising, and the role of the advertising man himself, examining ersatz ads in detail right across the body of JGB’s work.

News on the stalled competition to design the cover of the new edition of Crash.

Mike Holliday examines one of the strangest, most obscure artifacts of Ballard’s career: the concrete poetry and graphic art that make up ‘J.G. Ballard’s Court Circular’. As Mike discovers, even the most unremarkable of Ballard’s writings can repay close attention.

A slew of information on Ann Lislegaard, the brilliant artist behind ‘Crystal World (after J.G. Ballard’, the mesmerising animation that showed at the recent JGB exhibition in Barcelona. Includes links to an interview, video excerpts and stills.

RIP James Cawthorn, illustrator for New Worlds and Savoy Books; pastichist of Ballard.

The artist Guy Peellaert, designer of Bowie’s Diamond Dogs cover and more, died this week.

I’ve finally captured my impressions of Barcelona and Kosmopolis, with main ingredients: Lou Reed, Claire Walsh, Laurie Anderson, Kafka, Brecht, Dali, brilliant public space, Ballard, and the sheer unbridled thrill of one of the most amazing cities in Europe.

Here’s another republished interview, this time from 2005 as Mitchell and Ford probe JGB about his infamous 1970 ‘Crashed Cars’ exhibition, which elicited drunken aggression from its bemused audience.

More autopsy photography from Rick McGrath.

Transmission from Barcelona stop Having a wonderful time stop I believe in nothing stop Lost in surreal image machine and deep-blue-drenched corridors stretching to infinity stop Startling comma perverse visuals stop Rare books and writing stop Exhibition a raging success stop JGB would be proud stop Full letter to follow comma Love Rick end transmission

News at last.

Promotional film and catalogue prologue for the exhibition J.G. Ballard: Autopsy of the New Millennium, at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. Film features Marilyn Monroe’s ghost, Ballard’s mellifluous tones, snatched Aphex Twin, what looks like James Dean’s car and a severe case of the night terrors.

Press release with fuller information and accompanying images for JG Ballard, Autopsy of the New Millennium, opening today at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB).

Exciting news about Autopsy of the New Millennium, the 4-month exhibition celebrating the work and enduring influence of J.G. Ballard, opening at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona from tomorrow 22 July, 2008.

Wim Delvoye’s ‘Kiss’ series of x-ray art echoes The Atrocity Exhibition and the illustrations of Phoebe Gloeckner. WARNING: this post is indisputably unsafe for work. No, seriously: you have been warned.

Drained swimming pools are a staple in Ballard’s work, and also the subject of photographer Gigi Cifali’s latest series.

Film and media studio floods London 82 years hence, evokes Ballard.

Some more entries in the Crash Cover competition.

Ballard makes it onto a San Marino stamp. In the absence of American recognition, this will simply have to do.

Can anyone tell me what has happened to the competition to design a cover for Crash?

Troy Paiva’s desert photography evokes the crumbling, decadent resorts and enervated cityscapes of Ballard’s Vermilion Sands and Hello America stories. Enjoy this interview with Troy, the Light-Painter of Mojave D.

Out in the suburbs, the Birmingham-based Ballard exhibition Zodiac 3000 draws first blood…

For this upcoming exhibition, the International Project Space in Birmingham will be transformed into the J.G. Ballard Centre for Psychopathological Research, “an institute built to interrogate the New Psychology explored in Ballard’s fiction.”

Details of a new exhibition in London that “often plays with the constants of space and time”. It includes the work of Michelle Lord, whose “Future Ruins” series previously featured on Ballardian.

Banksy’s latest masterpiece.

Information on a forthcoming exhibition at The University of Texas at Dallas School of Arts and Humanities, inspired by Ballard and The Atrocity Exhibition.

Here’s a transcription of the BBC Radio Front Row review of Miracles, presented by Mark Lawson and featuring Iain Sinclair and Hermione Lee.

This post is given over to recent links readers have sent me. ‘Ballardian’ or not? You decide.

The Times has two more extracts from Miracles of Life. In the first, Ballard reminisces about his time as a trainee air force pilot. In the second, he discusses the ideas behind Crash.

Guardian columnist Jean Hannah Edelstein reviews the 12 Steps Down exhibition, based on J.G. Ballard’s short story, ‘The Drowned Giant’.

Here’s a new campaign from fashion label Dsquared2, featuring sex with crash-test mannequins. But it doesn’t appear to be selling anything. What exactly *is* it selling? Note the photographer: none other than our old mucker, Steven Meisel.

News of a ’site-concerned work’ inspired by Ballard’s short story ‘The Drowned Giant’ and by ‘the labyrinthine, vernacular architecture of Shoreditch Town Hall’s basement’, with 25 artists invited to produce work around these themes.

Here’s a selection of visual art that we’ve previously featured on this site, all directly inspired by or referencing themes in Ballard’s work. See Part 1 for more recent discoveries.

Image from ‘Future Ruins’
by Michelle Lord

Inspired by author J.G. Ballard’s literary visions of modernist architectural design and his prophetic views on the technological demise of the [...]

Here’s a selection of visual art I’ve recently come across, all directly inspired by or referencing themes in Ballard’s work.

Harper Collins and Times Online recently announced a competition to design a cover for Crash. Ballard himself will choose the winning design, so what to avoid? Rick Poynor knows.

Book designer Henry Yee has done a few Ballard covers in his time. His latest, for the reprint of The Kindness of Women, is lovely, weaving the erotic possibilities of the text (the curvature of a woman’s breast) with strong design (a prominent orb, enhanced with a block quote) and the persistence of memory (the [...]

Steven Meisel’s latest ‘atrocity porn’ is now online.
[ via TimC ]
Previously on Ballardian: k-punk on Steven Meisel.

Image from Jon Cattapan’s Drowned World (courtesy Victorian College of the Arts).
Still in Melbourne, I somehow missed this last year (think I may have been O/S at the time) but it’s worth recording as yet another excellent example of Ballard’s spreading influence in the visual arts.
There’s one apparent error, though — as far as I [...]

J.G. Ballard at KURBgallery.
Please pass on to anyone who might be interested.
From Pippa Tandy & David Bromfield:
“From January 11 to 20 2008 KURB gallery, an artist run non-profit art gallery, studios and performance space at 310 William Street Northbridge, Perth, Australia, will hold an exhibition, forum, programme and events in celebration of J.G. Ballard.
Interested visual [...]

News of an installation in Oslo…
Ann Lislegaard Crystal World ( after J.G Ballard ), 2006; Ann Lislegaard: Science Fiction and other worlds
26 May-26 August 2007
Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Dronningens gt 4, 0107 Oslo, Norway
Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art has in recent years presented a
series of exhibitions with younger Norwegian artists.
This year we [...]

© Metro-Centre, 2007.
Something is stirring over at our favourite shopping mall. After lying fallow for almost two months, the official blog of the Metro-Centre shopping centre in Brooklands stirs to life with a rather ominous poster campaign starring the failed talk-show host, David Cruise.
First, we were promised that ‘the wait is almost over’. And now, [...]

City of the Immortals, by Michelle Lord (2007).
Besides Future Ruins, Michelle Lord is holding a second exhibition as part of the UK’s national Architecture Week. Titled The City of the Immortals, it’s based “upon the Jorges Luis Borges short story ‘The Immortal’. In a narrative series of photographic images, the fictional city Borges describes is [...]

Future Ruins: Michelle Lord © 2007.
Michelle Lord has emailed me with some more information and stills from her show ‘Future Ruins’, now exhibiting at The Birmingham and Midland Institute, Margaret St., Birmingham B3 3BS UK. It’s on from June 15-23 and is part of Architecture Week 2007; see www.architectureweek.org.uk for further details.
I’m fascinated by Michelle’s [...]

In news just to hand (with hopefully more info to come):
——————————————————————————————————
+ FUTURE RUINS EXHIBITION
June 15-23
Press release:
Inspired by author JG Ballard’s mid-period novels, Michelle Lord’s ‘Future Ruins’ connects the remaining architectural examples of Birmingham’s concrete past with Ballard’s vision of the contemporary landscape, his prophetic views on Brutalist architecture and the technological demise of the urban [...]

There has been a Ballard backlash. Here are two of the more aggressive memes.

Ballard vs The Blogosphere
Ballard was recently interviewed by the Guardian in a series on writers’ rooms. In this feature he said, ‘The first drafts of my novels have all been written in longhand and then I type them up on my old [...]

This should have been included in yesterday’s wrapup, but wasn’t.
+ BALLARD/BURROUGHS
This very brief interview with Ballard (scroll down to the end of the V. Vale piece to find it) slipped under my radar when it came out earlier this year, but is definitely worth mentioning for the little extra light it sheds on one of [...]

+ IDEAL, RADIANT
In his excellent paper, ‘Ballard’s Banlieue Radieuse’, delivered at the Ballard conference, Owen Hatherley locates JGB’s Vermilion Sands stories as a vision at right angles to the dystopian tradition in which Ballard is normally housed — the Vermilion collection posits, Hatherley writes, ‘an actual, liveable future utopia that is eminently possible’. And yet, [...]