Ben Pearce is a New Zealand based sculptor who works with wood, stone, metal and found objects. His art explores memory and reconciles it thoughts of childhood – a recent and common ancestor to us all. He strives to make visible the quirks and tragedies of our mind’s recording machinations, to materialise the emotional states that can cripple our bodies and which often distort the way we record time and memory.
Pearce’s newest works in Crater Pools enclose black elliptical forms – lustrous orbs that confront the viewer as portals to other worlds. Combining these reflective surfaces with sandblasted wood assemblages, Pearce creates a plane of cascading labyrinth-like staircases of rocky outcrops. The forms are precariously stacked and lead us on a shaky and uncertain journey. Many other forms are perilously assembled is if by magic – geological rock stratas that have come about naturally or by man-made mysterious like Stone Henge or other megaliths.
Pearce completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2003, majoring in sculpture, at Wanganui Quay School of Fine Arts. Exhibiting regularly in New Zealand, Pearce has work held in the public collection of the Sargeant Gallery, Wanganui, and in private collections throughout New Zealand, England and the USA. He has had work included in group shows exploring contemporary sculpture at The Suter Art Gallery and The City Gallery Wellington. Pearce is the recent recipient of the No. 8 Wire National Art Award (2016), the Waikato Youth Art Award (2009), and the Wallace Art Award People’s Choice Award (2009). Pearce has also been included in Warwick Brown’s book Seen this Century, which features 100 contemporary New Zealand artists including sculptors, painters, printmakers and photographers.
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