Ben Mazey

Ben Mazey began his sculptural practice after returning to Australia at the onset of the pandemic. With most of his belongings still overseas, he devised a self-directed artist residency in his nearly empty Melbourne apartment, beginning with an ‘at-home clay kit’.  Since, Mazey has often followed simple mathematical rules, like starting with a 20x50cm clay rectangle, which he then contorts to a varying yet repetitive degree. Though he interchanges mediums, he typically uses slab-built ceramic with occasional experiments with lost wax casting bronze. He’s prone to duality (some pieces half gold, half raw, for instance), a lo-fi palette and layering glaze like a mask. Mostly, though, he subverts the domestic with sculptures of familiar household objects. He has them take on a mimetic quality, like out of a cartoon world, a joyful yet nihilistic fantasy.

With this DIY, grungy sensibility, Mazey draws from his inner and outer worlds, imbuing references collected from his New Zealand childhood and time abroad (he worked in fashion and design in the UK, France, and China, with seven years as Design Director at Kenzo, Paris). He also pulls from an affinity with Warhol’s pop art repetitions, Gordon Matta-Clark’s architectural interventions, Art Nouveau’s superfluous decoration, and the impermanence of Land Art. Too, as a Queer artist, he gives his pieces a playful—often camp—exaggeration in homage of his younger self, who felt pressured to mask his flamboyant side. With this assemblage of resonant emotional and aesthetic cues, Mazey seeks a release of cathartic nostalgia throughout his materials, process and final pieces.