Sarah Ball 'Bertillon'

S A R A H B A L L B E R T I L L O N

“We carry the genes and the culture of our ancestors, and what 

we think about them shapes what we think of ourselves, and how 

we make sense of our time and place. Are these good times, bad 

times, interesting times? We rely on history to tell us. History 

and science too, help us put our lives in context. But if we want 

to meet the dead looking alive, we turn to art… in imagination 

we chase the dead, shouting, “Come back!”... we sense that 

the dead have a vital force still – they have something to tell 

us... I don’t claim we can hear the past or see it. But we can 

listen and look.This is how we live in the world: romancing... 

For many years we have been concerned with de-centering the 

grand narrative. We have become romantic about the rootless, 

the broken, those without a voice and sceptical about great men, 

dismissive of heroes. That’s how our enquiry into human drama 

has evolved: first the gods go, and then the heroes, and then we 

are left with our grubby, compromised selves.” 1 

underscores the inquiry that has been driving my work for 

the last few years: the grouping of people and the naming 

and identification of types. 

Archival documentary photography, police mug shots and 

official identity cards are the source imagery for paintings 

of people caught in a fraction of a second on silver 

nitrate or glass for official and governmental purposes. 

The titles of the works I make were often the labels given 

to the photographic image by the official in authority 

– a policeman, civil servant or immigration officer 

who needed to label individuals into neat, recognisable 

and convenient types based on their crime, nationality, 

ethnicity or religion. 

Hilary Mantel 

I am an introvert. At least, I am according to the 

American journalist who interviewed me prior to a recent 

solo exhibition in Dallas. Confronted by a deadline and 

under pressure to deliver insightful column inches for an 

audience, she opted to write a portrait of a recognisable 

and well-understood type – a quiet and solitary English 

female artist. The word introvert is derived from the 

Latin ‘introvertere’ (intro ‘to the inside’ and vertere ‘to 

turn’) and in the article I am portrayed as a driven loner, 

who walks the ancient landscapes of West Penwith, eats 

soups in winter, salads in summer: the solitary artist 

in her Cornish studio. As with all clichés – it holds some 

truth. I understand this need to catergorise, because it 

Despite representing a form of reality, photographic 

images are not necessarily objective statements of fact. 

They are subjective representations of truth interpreted 

by a camera and then the viewer. Through translation 

in my work, these images are further interpreted by me, 

the painter. I seek to visually liberate the person from 

their official monochrome documentation and speculate 

on their true nature or humanity. I am interested in this 

act of translation; from the apparent certainty of this 

photographic record and official labeling to the malleable 

quality of paint, my work calls into question history, 

memory and story but also perception. 

This latest exhibition at Anima-Mundi is called ‘Bertillon’ 

and seeks to further explore the relationship between the 

1

label, type and image but also provokes percipience in a 

deliberately more open ended way. 

The exhibition takes its title from Alphonse Bertillon, who 

was a French police officer and biometrics researcher who 

applied the anthropological technique of anthropometry 

to law enforcement in the late 1800’s, using photography 

to create an identification system based on physical 

measurements. Used to evidence the pathology of crime 

and criminals, photography was thought to connect 

outward physical appearance and inner character traits. 

In essence it was believed good people ‘looked good’ and 

morally suspect people ‘looked bad or ugly’. They searched 

for; “The harmony of moral beauty and physical beauty… the 

science of discovering the relation between the exterior and interior 

– between the visible surface and the invisible spirit it covers…” 2 

The source material for this show is wider ranging than 

in previous exhibitions, pulling together photographs of 

forced laborours from The Deutsch-Russisches Museum 

Berlin-Karlshorst (FL1 – 6), Camp guards from The 

Imperial War Museum archive (CG 1 – 9), an immigrant 

from The Sherman archives (IM1), Subjects from the 

Alphonse Bertillon exhibition at MOMA New York 

(BE1 – BE9) and police archived mug-shots from various 

archives (AC 1 – AC15). 

My uncertainty concerning human capability was peaked 

when I read the following passage from a transcribed 

interview with Australian author Richard Miller Flanagan; 

“Some Japanese women had come to my father’s house to say sorry 

to him some years before. They were part of a network in Japan 

that had campaigned hard to try to get the history curriculum in 

the schools changed to accurately reflect the reality of Japanese 

militarism. One of them was a journalist who had done very 

brave and extraordinary work exposing the horrors of Unit 731, 

I think it is, the Japanese small army in Manchuria, that did 

the most horrific biological experiments on Chinese civilians and 

prisoners. Through these quite extraordinary and brave women 

I was able to find these guards and make contact with them and 

go and meet them. I met one who had been the sort of Ivan the 

Terrible of my father’s camp, who the Australians knew as “the 

Lizard”. I hadn’t known until five minutes before I arrived at 

this taxi company in an outer suburb of Tokyo that this man I 

was meeting was actually the Lizard, and that rather undid me, 

I must say. He was hated by the Australians for his violence; he 

was sentenced to death for war crimes after the war; he had his 

sentenced commuted to life imprisonment, and he then was released 

in an amnesty in 1956. The man I met though was this courteous, 

kindly and generous old man. Bizarrely, an earthquake hit Tokyo 

as I was sitting in the room with him, and the whole room pitched 

around like a bobbling dinghy in a most wild sea, and I saw 

him frightened. I realised whatever evil is, it wasn’t in that room 

with us.” 3 

American writer Ursula Le Guin believed that “If you 

cannot or will not imagine the results of your actions, there’s 

no way you can act morally or responsibly. Little kids can’t 

do it; babies are morally monsters – completely greedy. Their 

imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy”. 

2

Empathy is at the root of all my work. But of course, 

empathy can sometimes prove challenging when 

presented with extremes. Although the research material 

comes from very different sources it still deals with the 

issues of how we ‘fit’ together; how we judge, make 

assumptions and form prejudices and in turn act upon 

those prejudices. Philosopher, Alain De Botton once 

wrote “Images are important partly because they can generate 

compassion… to recognize ourselves in the experience of strangers 

and can make their pain matter to us as much as our own.” 5 

Bertillon’s investigations put simply were about whether 

or not we are able to judge a book by its cover. I hope 

that through translation of these chosen images I posit 

a deep rooted question in the mind of the viewer as to 

how possible this task really is, but furthermore on the far 

reaching implications of doing so. Every day I test myself 

stringently on this, it is a test that I hope is represented 

through this collection of paintings. In terms of my work, 

I would apply the following from a journal entry from 

John Steinbeck when contemplating his own creative 

output; “In every honest bit of writing in the world…. there is a 

base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other 

you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads 

to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, 

many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing 

punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always 

that base theme. Try to understand each other”. 6 

1 Extract from ‘The Dead Have Something To Tell Us’, Hilary 

Mantel’s Reith Lectures, 2017 

2 Johann Kasper Lavater ‘Essays on Physiognomy: Designed to 

Promote the Knowledge and Love of Mankind. Vol 1’, 1789 

3 From a conversation between Ramona Koval and Richard 

Miller Flanagan 

4 “The Magician’, Guardian Interview, December, 2005 

5 Alain De Botton, ‘Religion for Atheists’, Penguin, 2012 

6 Journal entry by John Steinbeck, 1938 from the Introduction 

to ‘Of Mice and Men’, Penguin, 1994 

Sarah Ball, 2017 

14

AC1 

oil on gesso primed canvas . 80 x 80 cm 

25

AC2 

oil on gesso primed panel . 18 x 13 cm 

6

AC3 


7

AC4 


8

AC5 


9

AC6 


10

AC7 


11

12

AC8 


13

AC9 


14

AC10 


15

AC11 


16

AC12 


17

AC13 


18

19

20

AC14 


21

AC15 


22

23

BE1 


24

BE2 


25

BE3 


26

BE4 


27

BE5 


28

BE6 


29

BE7 


30

BE8 


31

32

BE9 


33

IM1 


34

35

FL1 

oil on gesso primed panel . 25.5 x 20 cm 

36

FL2 


37

FL3 


38

FL4 


39

40

FL5 


41

FL6 


42

43

44

CG1-9 

oil on gesso primed panel . 18 x 24 cm each 

45

BIOGRAPHY 

Born 1965, South Yorkshire 

1983 - 1986 Newport Art College 

2003 - 2005 MFA, Bath Spa University 

Lives near Penzance, Cornwall 

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 

2017 Bertillon, Anima-Mundi, St. Ives 

Kindred. Conduit Gallery, Dallas 

2016 The Garden Room, House of St Barnabas, London 

2015 Immigrants. Millennium, St Ives 

& Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens 

2014 Accused : Part III, Conduit Gallery, Dallas 

Damaged Humans, London 

2013 Accused : Part II, Millennium, St Ives 

2012 Accused, Millennium, St Ives 

2011 Sarah Ball & Meirion Ginsberg, Martin Tinney, Cardiff 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 

2016 From Silence, Herrick Gallery, Mayfair, London 

The Marmite Prize for Painting, Block 336, London 

& High Lanes Gallery, Drogheda, Ireland 

Art16, Olympia, London 

Art Central, Hong Kong 

ArtNY, Pier 94, NY 

The Threadneedle Prize, Mall Galleries, London 

2015 The Dallas Art Fair, Dallas 

Art 15, Olympia, London 

London Art Fair, London 

2014 Miniare, London 

The National Open Art Competition: 

Somerset House (Winner: Best from Wales) 

Threadneedle Prize, Mall Galleries (Shortlisted artist) 

Fourteen, Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre, Wales 

The Dallas Art Fair, Dallas 

Art 14, Olympia, London 

One’s Self As Another, RWA, Bristol 


2013 The Threadneedle Prize, Mall Galleries, London 

Suspended Sentences, Newlyn, Cornwall 

Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, Bristol 

Welsh Artist of the Year Exhibition; 

Cardiff (Winner : Welsh Artist of the Year 2013) 


2012 The National Open Art Competition; 

(Winner: Best from Wales) 

Never Never, Aberystwyth Arts Centre 


2011 Hunting The Hunted (with Beth Carter& Duncan Cameron); 

bo.lee, Bath 

Wunderkammer (Off site exhibition at The Octagon Chapel); 

bo.lee Gallery, Bath 


2010 RWA 158th Autumn Exhibition, RWA, Bristol 

Here & Now, Newport Museum and Art Galleries, Newport 

RWA 3rd Open Painting Exhibition, RWA, Bristol 

2009 RWA 157th Autumn Exhibition, RWA, Bristol 

Threadneedle Prize, Mall Galleries, London 

2008 Purchase Prize; 

Wales Millennium Centre, University of Glamorgan 

2007 RWA Autumn Exhibition, RWA, Bristol 

Washington Gallery, Penarth (curated by John Selway) 

MA all, Stroud House Gallery, Stroud 

2006 Undercover, Oriel Davies, Powys 

Purchase Prize (short listed); 

Oriel Y Bont, University of Glamorgan 

Presque Vu, Paintworks, Bristol 

2005 Artsway Open 05, Artsway, Hampshire 

Represented by Anima-Mundi. Works in collections worldwide

Published by Anima-Mundi to coincide with the exhibition ‘Bertillon’ by Sarah Ball 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or 

by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers 

Photography by Christopher Morris 

Street-an-Pol . St. Ives . Cornwall . Tel: 01736 793121 . Email: mail@anima-mundi.co.uk . www.anima-mundi.co.uk

Sarah Ball 'Bertillon'

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