JG Ballard's daughter on the mother who could never be mentioned

When the artist Fay Ballard was seven, her mother died – and was never talked about again. Chris Hall meets the daughter of the novelist JG Ballard 


Chris Hall

Friday 20 June 2014 15.00 BST

Farewell, Fay Ballard's drawing of her father, the novelist JG Ballard
- based on a photograph she took on the day he moved out of the family home at Shepperton.

"I remember my mother dying, quite vividly, and afterwards sitting in the car – a big old Armstrong Siddeley I think – and I was in the passenger seat and Daddy just cried and cried. After that, we moved forward – that was it." Fay Ballard, daughter of the writer JG Ballard, is describing what happened when her mother, Mary, died of pneumonia, aged 34, on a family holiday in Alicante, Spain. After the burial, her father drove Fay, her sister, Bea, and brother, Jim, home to England. Fay was seven years old.

Fay Ballard / House Clearance Illustrations

Swimming cap.

"When I was drawing it, I gave it this very dark … almost like a dark cloud underneath the floral print. It's not that different to the flipper in that sense."

Fay Ballard: 

House Clearance illustrations

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2014/jun/20/fay-ballard-house-clearance-illustrations

A selection of images from Fay Ballard's exhibition House Clearance about her father, JG Ballard, and her mother, Mary, at Eleven Spitalfields gallery



Chris Hall
Friday 20 June 2014 15.00 BST

Flippeer

"The flipper had been used as a doorstop since I was about 14 – it was my brother's – and there it was still, covered in a beautiful, fine dust. When people look at the flipper, they often say they see a woman there wearing some clothes. That's my unconscious working."

Origami elephant. 

 "We used to sit around this big Chinese table from Shanghai that his mother had given him and make origami puppets. I remember making an elephant with him. However, when I found the book there was no elephant in it – so was my memory playing a trick? I don't know."

Lemon

"When I went back to Shepperton in May 2008 the first thing I said was, 'Oh my God, you still have the orange!' and he looked at me and said, 'It's a lemon.' … I have the lemon at home and it's completely dried and you can shake it and hear the pips."

Chess Set. JG Ballard's childhood chess set from Shanghai in the 1930s, used during his internment by the Japanese and brought to England after the war where it lived on his study bookshelf.

Memory Box: About my Father 2012.