Ben Mazey

Aotearoa-born, Ben Mazey began his sculptural practice in Melbourne at the onset of the pandemic. Having returned to Australia with most of his belongings still overseas, Mazey transformed his nearly empty apartment into a self-directed artist residency, beginning with little more than an ‘at-home clay kit’. What began as an improvised response to isolation became the foundation of an evolving sculptural practice characterised by experimentation, repetition and a distinctly DIY sensibility.

Mazey frequently establishes simple mathematical parameters as a starting point for his work - such as a 20 × 50 cm rectangle of clay - which he then manipulates, folds and contorts through varying degrees of repetition. Working predominantly in slab-built ceramic, with occasional explorations into lost-wax cast bronze, he embraces the tension between structure and spontaneity. His works often employ a lo-fi palette, contrasting raw surfaces with saturated glaze, which is layered onto the ceramic almost like a mask. Duality is a recurring device, evident in works that juxtapose polished and unfinished surfaces, ornament and restraint, or the precious and the everyday.

At the heart of Mazey’s practice is a playful subversion of the domestic. Familiar household objects are transformed into exaggerated sculptural forms that hover between recognition and abstraction, taking on the mimetic quality of objects from a cartoon universe. They are at once joyful and slightly absurd, carrying an undercurrent of existential unease.

Mazey draws freely from both his personal history and his experiences abroad. Raised in New Zealand, he subsequently worked across fashion and design in the UK, France and China, including seven years as Design Director at Kenzo in Paris. His visual language reflects this diverse cultural and professional background, alongside influences ranging from Andy Warhol’s repetition and Pop sensibility to Gordon Matta-Clark’s architectural interventions, the ornamental excess of Art Nouveau and the transience of Land Art. 

As a queer artist, Mazey also embraces camp, exaggeration and theatricality as tools of reclamation. His sculptures give space to the flamboyance and playfulness of a younger self who once felt compelled to suppress these qualities. Nostalgia, memory and fantasy therefore become active materials within the work, translated through colour, surface, repetition and form.

The resulting sculptures occupy a space between the familiar and the fantastical: playful, irreverent and materially direct, yet underpinned by a deeper investigation into identity, memory, desire and impermanence. Through his deliberately handmade approach, Mazey transforms the everyday into something strange and celebratory, finding catharsis in the act of making and in the memories embedded within his objects.