Ben Ali Ong - Ballads of the Dead and Dreaming

Art Month Blog 23/3/2011

Rhianna Walcott

Ben Ali Ong - Ballads of the Dead and Dreaming

With its darkly poetic title, Ballads of the Dead and Dreaming, Ben Ali Ong’s latest series will not disappoint those familiar with his ominous, seductive and moody photographs. The exhibition which is being shown at Tim Olsen Gallery, as part of Art Month Sydney, chronicles Ong’s ongoing fascination with ideas of mortality, spirituality and the subconscious.

Ben Ali Ong, Ballads of the Dead and Dreaming #09, 2011, C type photograph, 90 x 135cm


Ben Ali Ong, Ballads of the Dead and Dreaming #10, 2011, C type photograph, 90 x 135cm

Moving through the exhibition, the viewer slips between images of bare wintry landscapes, tempestuous seas and birds circling against a backdrop of brooding apocalyptic clouds. Interspersed amongst these landscapes is a series of tableaux, featuring antiquated marble figures and scenes from long forgotten paintings, set side by side with portraits depicting ghost like figures. Wreathed in mystery and ambiguity, each photograph taps into the subconscious of the viewer, provoking a myriad of different associations and unique emotional responses.

Recognisable by their distortions and imperfections, Ong’s photographs carry obvious reminders of the artist’s existence and involvement in the creative process. Shot with an analogue camera on 35mm black and white film, the artist deliberately sets out to physically manipulate each image and has been known to scratch and mark the surface of the negative with etching tools, sandpaper, water and chemicals amongst other things. The resulting distorted negatives are then layered and sandwiched together during the scanning process to produce photographs which capture a timeless, dreamlike quality.


Ben Ali Ong, Ballads of the Dead and Dreaming #5, 2011, C type photograph, 90 x 135cm

The inherent allure of Ben Ali Ong’s photographs stems from the psychological pull which draws the viewer into each work. Influenced by artists such as Francis Bacon, Goya and early French Impressionist photographers and reminiscent of film noir imagery, Ong’s work has an underlying sense of anguish and sorrow (perhaps even horror) which clings to these black and white photographs. The shadowy, brooding drama and chiaroscuro of the artist’s work captures the delicate interplay between lightness and darkness in a way which acts as a visual metaphor for the vagaries of human existence; alluding to the idea that the beauty and fragility of life are inseparable from the horror and sorrow which accompany it. The resulting emotional pull resonates with and touches some deep inner core which resides within all humanity, transporting us away from our everyday existence.


Ben Ali Ong, Ballads of the Dead and Dreaming #7, 2011, C type photograph, 90 x 135cm

Ong’s portraits seem to capture a moment outside of time in which the subject of the portrait is both present and absent. With their blurred faces, haunted eyes and almost terrible stillness, Ong’s portraits are reminiscent of memento mori, eliciting reminders of the fragility of the individual. Captured on film, the anonymous subjects of these portraits appear to be almost fading away before our eyes whilst, in contrast, the anguished face of a woman carved from marble possesses a sense of movement and life noticeably absent from the portraits of the living. In this way, Ong’s photographs, which are at once both beautiful and frightening, achieve a timeless, unknown, almost half forgotten quality or existence which touches upon ideas of life, death and morality.
Perhaps the most powerful element of Ben Ali Ong’s practice though, is the fact that, unlike many contemporary artists who find themselves caught in a web of intellectualization, Ong’s photographs speak straight from the soul…


Rhianna Walcott is an arts writer and gallery manager of Artereal Gallery, Sydney

All images courtesy of the artist and Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney

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