British artist Sarah Ball (b. 1965) will present her first institutional solo exhibition Oh! You Pretty Things at Longlati on August 20, 2025. How is identity created, expressed, and rendered visible? In Ball’s poised and restrained portraits—infused with the aesthetic codes of fashion—identity is not portrayed as a stable condition, but as a fluid visual experiment. Through eight works, Ball weaves together an embodied inquiry that resonates beyond formal language, encompassing the nuanced expression of individuality, the performativity of identity, and offers a reflective gaze toward the cultural psyche of our time.
“I’m lucky to have had David Bowie songs as a soundtrack to my life.”
—— Sarah Ball
Sarah Ball, Henry with Iris, 2025, oil on canvas, 250 x 200 cm. Courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and New York. Photo by Todd-White Art Photography
Oh! You Pretty Things borrows its title from British rock icon David Bowie’s 1971 song of the same name. As early as the 1970s, Bowie had already begun constructing performative personas—most notably ‘The Thin White Duke’—that predated Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. Bowie’s self-mythologizing continually redefined the expressive vocabulary of popular culture. The spirit of Bowie’s work is echoed in Ball’s artistic practice. For both Bowie and Ball, identity is not a static attribute but a dynamic choreography between self-presentation and social reception, identity and performance—a visual action that is continually constructed and dismantled.
In her 2024 solo exhibition Tilted at Stephen Friedman Gallery, New York, Ball examined the aesthetics of 21st-century dandyism. Her latest work continues this trajectory, advancing her visual exploration into the so-called ‘Dandy’, manifested by Bowie’s own ‘Thin White Duke’. Many of the figures in Ball’s portraits appear with meticulously applied makeup, their features imbued with a porcelain-like detachment. The artist’s affinity for the sartorial aesthetics of 1930s cinema manifests in their garments, blending romantic opulence with meticulous realism. Suits, furs, sweaters, and workwear bear subtle imprints of social conventions and classic codes. Through posture, silence, and gaze, they reveal a cultivated awareness of self-image. Their expressions do not solicit the viewer’s engagement. Instead, they seem suspended in a liminal threshold—visible, while resisting definition.
In Henry with Iris (2025), this becomes especially pronounced. While the subject’s face remains clearly rendered, the hands are abstracted into formless gestures, subtly displacing the visual emphasis of the composition. For Ball, painting is not a tool for mimetic representation, but rather a site of affective projection and identity analysis. These “unfinished” hands seem to embody the spirit of Bowie’s era—a period marked by fluid identities and ineffable emotions—gaining new resonance precisely through their absence.
About the Artist
Sarah Ball, Courtesy Sarah Ball and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and New York. Photo by Christopher Morris
Sarah Ball was born in 1965 in Yorkshire, UK. She currently lives and works in Cornwall, UK. Ball studied at Newport Art College in the early 1980s and completed an MFA at Bath Spa University in 2005. Profiles on the artist have been published by The New York Times, Artsy, House & Garden, and The Art Newspaper.
Ball is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and New York. For Frieze London 2025, Stephen Friedman Gallery will exhibit a solo presentation of new portraits by the artist. Bringing together large and small-scale paintings alongside a series of 20 works on paper, the presentation continues Ball’s sensitive exploration of the human condition and how it is outwardly expressed.
Ball’s works are included in the permanent collections of the British Museum, London, UK; Grace Museum, Abilene, Texas, USA; Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire, UK; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; Long Museum, Shanghai, China; Pond Society, Shanghai, China; Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, Texas, USA; University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, Wales, UK.
