Ben Sanderson
I’m a visual artist with a studio at CAST, in Helston, Cornwall. My works develop slowly, attuned to the seasons, embracing cyclical processes of growth & decay. I work in painting, drawing & textiles, often returning to, and transforming work. Monotypes on paper are echoed in printed elements appearing on canvas; canvas is sewn & patched back together, or mulched to become rag paper, becoming a ground for new painting.
In 2021 I had my first solo show at Kestle Barton, Cornwall. The exhibition grew from three years visiting Trebah Gardens on the Helford River. During this time, I organised garden walks with specialists (an ethnobotanical researcher, gardeners, a psychiatrist, a herbalist, artists & poets) to discuss the space between people and plants. These conversations informed my work and have left me questioning what happens at the garden’s edge.
When watching the garden, it often became a metaphor for society. A well-kept edge, a ditch, weeds, a wildflower, the potted, the garden flower. Since my time at Trebah, I have become fascinated by the ways that rogue, uncultivated, uninvited species meet and mix with the carefully selected ones. Systems of power and oppression are echoed in the garden; naming, categorising, cultivating, displacing, collecting, weeding. The flowers in the work aren’t meant to be garden flowers, they are the ones that live in the cracks of the pavement and that are crawling up the walls.
EDUCATION
Syllabus III, Wysing Arts Centre, Eastside Projects, New Contemporaries, S1 Artspace, Spike Island, Studio Voltaire, 2017-2018
University College Falmouth, BA (hons) Fine Art, 2006-2009
Foundation in Art and Design, Coventry University, 2005-2006
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
The future is Today, Mead Gallery, Coventry, 2025
Ouroboros, MIRROR gallery, Plymouth, 2024
In Flower Beds, Hweg, Cornwall, 2023
Bridge the Tamar, Mirror, Plymouth, 2023
Exeter Contemporary Open, Exeter Phoenix Gallery, Exeter, 2022
Thanks For the Apples, Falmouth Art Gallery, Cornwall, 2021
Your Foot in my Face, Kingsgate Project Space, London, 2021
Green at an Angle, Kestle Barton, Cornwall, 2021 (solo)
Glade, Potager Garden, curated by Luke Frost, Cornwall, 2020
Chicken Nuggets, Pool School Gallery, Cornwall, 2019
Unbounded, Eden Project, Cornwall, 2019
Scenes, Curated by Naomi Frears, Newlyn Art Gallery Picture Room, Cornwall, 2019
Equinoxy, Sam Bassett’s Studio, St Ives, Cornwall, 2019
Where it is, there it is, Auction House, Redruth, Cornwall2018
Can we Still Be Friends?, Guest Projects, London, 2018
These Fingers Read Sideways, Monomatic, Fetes College, Edinburgh, 2018
What is this Place?, Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall, 2017
Smile Orange, Cubitt Gallery, London, 2015
Adam Collier, Aimée Parrott, & Ben Sanderson, Naomi Frears Studio, St Ives, Cornwall, 2015
Testing Tropes, Kestle Barton, Cornwall, 2015
Strepitus, Crepitus, Fragor, curated by Naomi Frears, Penwith Gallery, Cornwall, 2015
First Eleven, CAST, Cornwall, 2013
The Dark Rooms, CAST, Cornwall, 2013
COMMISSIONS
Warwick University Art Collection, 2024
Hospital Rooms, Cove ward Redruth, 2024
Hospital Rooms, Bethlem Mother and Baby Unit, London, 2021
The Six Pillars of Modernism, collaboration with Ella Frears, Tate St Ives, Cornwall, 2017
RESIDENCIES
Pool School Gallery, Cornwall, 2019-2020
Trebah Gardens, Cornwall, 2019/2021
The Cornwall Workshop led by Christina Mackie, Kestle Barton, Cornwall, 2017
Home Service Project, Newlyn Art Gallery and Crossroads Care Home, Cornwall, 2016/2017 Retreat, Cornwall, 2016/17/18
AWARDS
Southwest Showcase, 2023
Arts Council DYCP, 2023
Syllabus III Bursary Fenton Arts Trust - 2017