Colonial Debris, Imperial Fragments – A Catalog

Posted on June 24, 2025 by matt ballou under Art, Life, news, Writing

I’m pleased to announce the publication of a catalog about the exhibition that Simon Tatum and I had at Vanderbilt University last year. Working with Oswaldo Garcia at The Riso Room, housed within Mizzou’s School of Visual Studies, I was able to produce a slim volume that highlights some of the work and writing that Simon and I produced for this show. We hope to take the exhibition around to other venues, and these catalogs feel like a great physical supplement to proposals. Click below to take a look inside.

The images show representative examples of the work we include, as well as updated texts that give an overview of the history and context we’re working within. I’m excited by how the risograph process has captured the documentary quality of Simon’s work and the surface development of my own pieces. I love the way the back cover shows Donald Crowhurst’s final coda, “IT IS THE MERCY.” Taken from his logs, this is Crowhurst’s actual writing reproduced.

If you’re interested in obtaining a copy for $25, please send payment via one of the options below:

Continuing Direction of New Work

Posted on July 14, 2016 by matt ballou under Art, Life

I have been working on a series of abstractions off and on for nearly a year. Here’s where they were last October. Here’s where they were more recently in my last exhibition, WHENEVER/WHEN, two months ago.

Over the last week or so I’ve taken another step, completing two works (one is below) and starting a number of smaller studies.

Interferometry. Oil, oil stick, spray paint, window marker on panel, 25 by 25 inches, 2016. Collection of Bobby and Laura Schembre.

The new smaller studies are attempts to integrate my digital drawings with my physical hand. After printing the works out at roughly 10 by 10 inches (on an Epson 9900 printer), I worked back into them using high quality acrylic inks and some acrylic paint. See a first pass of works below.

Untitled Study (Meaningful Shape), Acrylic and ink on canvas mounted on panel, roughly 10 by 10 inches, 2016.

Untitled Study (AU), Acrylic and ink on canvas mounted on panel, roughly 10 by 10 inches, 2016.

Untitled Study (NV), Acrylic and ink on canvas mounted on panel, roughly 8 by 9 inches, 2016.

Untitled Study (Zig), Acrylic and ink on canvas mounted on panel, roughly 9 by 10 inches, 2016.

While I have worked on a couple representational images since my heart attack in February, I haven’t really felt the impulse to make those works. It’s strange, since that was my aim for 20 years. Not sure what it all means, though I do have an exhibition of representational works (which were completed in 2015, for the most part), so seeing those on display may get me going in that direction again. Who knows.