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 using 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 ceramic vessels 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.

Interested in the feelings and memory these throwaway objects evoke, Hayes comically uses trash to build vessels of Western cultural heritage. Our garbage becoming a biographic assemblage of certain value systems. The unimportant plastic bottle, the takeaway container and toothpaste ironically put on a pedestal, vitrified, forever set in stone. Almost sarcastically, the works are critiques of how material value is manufactured. But in the environment, it does not matter, material hierarchy does not exist, and both refuse to break down and return to the earth.

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 an Australian ceramic artist whose work explores the intersection of memory, material, and environmental consciousness. Through his innovative approach to ceramics, Hayes transforms discarded plastic objects into enduring sculptural pieces, challenging perceptions of value and permanence. His work often carries a sense of nostalgia and humour, prompting reflection on the everyday items we overlook and discard.

Hayes completed a Bachelor of Arts (Visual) with Honours in Ceramics at the Australian National University School of Art in 2013. His career has since taken him to the historic ceramic studios of Jingdezhen, China, where in 2023 he has exhibited as part of international ceramic art exchanges. He has received significant recognition for his practice, including winning the 2024 Muswellbrook Art Prize (Ceramics) and being a finalist in the 2022 Waverley Small Sculpture Prize. He has also represented Stanley Street Gallery at the 2018, 2023 & 2024 Sydney Contemporary Art Fair and the Melbourne Design Fair.

His work was the subject of a major feature in The Journal of Australian Ceramics (Issue 63, 2024), highlighting his unique perspective on material, memory, and environmental impact. But at its core, his work is about something simple: paying attention—to the things we use, the things we throw away, and the pressures, both big and small, that shape us all.

Currently living and working in Ngario Country (Captains Flat, NSW), Hayes explores new ways to reimagine everyday materials, transforming the discarded into thought-provoking ceramic works.

Shaun Hayes: CV March, 2025 Download