Shaun Hayes is a ceramic artist who investigates the relationship between throwaway objects and their ability to instil a sense of reflection on memory, creating a deeply nostalgic and sometimes humorous representation of time and place. Inspired by the experience of hearing a song on the radio from his childhood, the exhibition I Guess This Is Growing Up investigates how the arousal of memory can transport a person back in time. He contemplates the uncertainty of growing older and how the passing of time encourages inner deliberation as he grapples with his own transition into adulthood.
Shaun Hayes: Artist Statement & Bio
The collection of plastic objects that inform Hayes’s sculptures are evocative of certain memories and feelings, capturing these ephemeral moments in time. Hayes contemplates the nature of today’s throwaway society and through the use of seemingly unimportant, everyday objects, humorously highlights the importance of being more conscious of the enduring impact waste has on the environment. Drawing on the aesthetics of traditional Chinese ceramics combined with contemporary objects, his adorned vessels echo a blending of past and present, old and new as well as illustrating the material similarities between plastic and ceramics.
Through methods of repetition, rearranging and joining of cast objects paired with a tonal colour palette, Hayes’s sculptures are reminiscent of fantastical and comical imagery whilst also highlighting the tensions of growing up in conversation with existing in a wasteful, thoughtless consumerist society.
Shaun Hayes is a ceramic artist who investigates the relationship between throwaway objects and their ability to instil a sense of reflection on memory, creating a deeply nostalgic and sometimes humorous representation of time and place.
Hayes received a Bachelor of Arts (Visual), with Honours majoring in Ceramics from the Australian National University School of Art in 2013. He was awarded an artist residency at Strathnairn Arts in July of 2014 and is still currently producing work there. His trips to Jingdezhen China in 2011 and 2013 continues to be an influence.
Shaun is represented by Stanley Street Gallery and was selected to represent them at the Sydney Contemporary Art Fair, Carriageworks Sydney in September 2018.
Shaun Hayes: CV February, 2021
Education
Solo exhibitions
Two person exhibitions
Group exhibitions
Awards and achievements
Residencies & Workshops
Reviews and publicity
Artist Profile Magazine issue 41, Discovery, November 2017
BMA magazine Canberra, Artist Profile, November 2016
A. Harding, Aust View, Artist Profile, 25 February 2015
S. Pryor, Canberra’s Arts Diary, Canberra Times, 28 February 2015
S. Pryor, Capital Life: July 12, the Sydney Morning Herald, 9 July 2014
Web reviews
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6249459/three-sculptors-on-space-and-reality/ The Canberra Times review by Sasha Grishin, July 1st 2019
https://stephenrrandall.wordpress.com/tag/shaun-hayes/ ANCA Gallery review by Stephen Randall, March 1st, 2015
http://anca.net.au/portfolio/guilty-pleasures/ Guilty Pleasures, ANCA Gallery, 25th February- 15h March 2015
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6071384/capital-life-february-28/ The Canberra Times review by Sally Pryor, February 26th, 2015
https://www.musingaboutmud.com/2013/08/25/emerging-artist-shaun-hayes/ Musing About Mud by Carole Epp, August 25th 2013
Andjana Pachkova, Julie Blyfield, Shaun Hayes & Toni Messiter
#group#show
March 11-26, 2021