Tributes to West artist Ben shot dead in Mexico
AFAMILY has paid tribute to the founder of a Bristol art collective and former UWE student who has been shot dead while shopping in Mexico.
Poet and artist Ben Corser, 37, had been in a supermarket to pick up groceries in Colima when he was killed on Tuesday, May 24.
Tourist Ben, from Cornwall, was sitting in the back of a car outside the shop on Camino Real Boulevard with two friends when all three were shot dead.
Ben’s parents, former head teacher Andrew Corser and Lorraine Downes, and his brother Tom Corser, said he was in “the wrong place at the wrong time”. They say Ben had been living there since January and was “becoming part of the community”. They say he was killed alongside his two friends, Claudio and
Alfredo. They have arranged for his body to be returned to the UK for a funeral in St Just in Cornwall.
Their statement said: “We have had no explanation, no reasons given, no suggestion of robbery, kidnapping or anything else.
“It is most likely that this was a question of Ben (and Claudio and Alfredo) being tragically in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Thank you for all your lovely expressions of regret and support, and all of the offers of help – St Just, Ben’s large network of friends, have given the family vital comfort in this appalling time of grief..
“His heart-rending death came as such a shock to all of us, and to each of his multitude of friends around the country and beyond.”
After completing his A-Levels in Truro, Ben attended Bristol UWE before studying at Birkbeck College, London.
His family added: “He held first class degrees in both fine art and mathematics, he was an artist, a poet, a computer user, maker, coder and programmer, a skateboarder, a sea swimmer, a wild camper, a festival goer, an actor, a yoga lover, a photographer, a music maker, a dancer.
“He was a lover of people from the youngest to the oldest, man, woman and child; of animals (especially dogs and cats); of nature, from the cultivated through to the wildest; but also of the urban environment, of graffiti and of skyscrapers; and of all art – from the earliest, the most representational, to the most abstract, the newest and the most conceptual.
Ben was just so much fun to be with because he lived in the moment, with everybody (and every dog or cat) he met and who met him, and he was so generous, sharing his joy in life, and everything else he had, with all of us.”
The family added: “Ben was one of the founders of an eclectic group of artists called the Bristol Diving School; it is hoped that exhibitions of his work will be arranged in Bristol and Cornwall.’’
There has been a reported wave of violence in Colima, the capital city of the Mexican state of the same name.
Ben is the second person from Cornwall to be shot and killed in Mexico this year. Chris Cleave, 54, was driving through Playa del Carmen in Cancun, on the opposite side of the country, when he was killed in March.