​Contemporary South African Art

 Article credits to: http://www.art.co.za/toniballenden/



Ballenden has been teaching and producing art since qualifying cum laude in fine art in 1993 at the Witswatersrand Technikon in Johannesburg South Africa.

Her work is to be found in many private and public collections including the Anglo American Collection and the Sasol Collection.

Ballenden has been granted several awards and won first prize in a the Kempton Park National Art Competition.

The imagery in Ballendens work is created from memories juxtaposed with her personal collection of icons and photographs. Ballendens subject matter has evolved with maturity and life experience, she feels a continual challenge to experiment with new techniques in her search to find a unique way of telling her story.

Using a process of deconstruction, old and new unresolved work is torn and cut up. Ballenden then finds the most engaging pieces of her drawings, paintings and etchings re-assembling them together with newly created images. This process of collarging, cutting, tearing, sewing together, and re-constructing is a metaphor for the experience of her life. The completed works speak about slices of life reassembled.

The extraordinary tapestries of Ballendens life are multi layered and filled with metaphors and symbolism. The Ladders are about the difficult climb through life, sometimes we slip back on the rungs of the ladder only to begin the climb again. The Ladders reach between heaven and earth. The Rabbit and the Rocking Horse represents the universal inner child who is never quite healed. The image of the House speaks about the power and the secrets within the family. Ballenden cuts out shapes in the canvas and paper hinting at the missing parts of the emotional self.

Etching, oil paint, coloured and black ink, tracing paper cotton and white acrylic gesso paint are the main mediums used, creating a simplicity and childlike appearance on the surface of the fragile tracing paper, paper and un-stretched raw canvas.

In 1995 Ballenden first left out the backgrounds in her drawings creating a feeling of a silent empty void. Today the white background has become symbolic of her drawings. They speak of a stillness a quietude in her life and a deep sense of feeling grounded.

Ballendens creativity emerges through play the accident the co-incidences of the surprise co-joining of two seemingly unrelated pieces of work. And so her story emerges in a strange and exaggerated truth.

“ART NO LESS THAN WISDOM, WAITS ON LIFE” - Louise Bourgeois.