Ben Cain
Works and lives in London
Ben Cain is a London and Zagreb based artist, whose multidisciplinary practice focuses on the effect of new conditions of work upon social and material interrelations, and on how the collapsing spaces of work and leisure affect our health, love, and care, both for ourselves and other people and things. His work is concerned with the work that objects do, and the work that viewers do. He combines primary sensory experiences of spaces and objects with language-based and immaterial encounters which involve viewers in the construction of images, spaces and objects. Overlapping crafted objects with industrial manufacture, and the tool or machine with the art object, the work is characterised by use-value and uselessness. The objects stand both as artefacts and exercises, records of and catalysts for production, in turn they are both active and inert. The work that objects and viewers (understood as interchangeable roles) do is a recurring theme, and a love/hate relationship with ‘Participation’ continues to be at the core of Ben’s practice. This is reflected in his two multiple editions for Assembly Line, ‘Can We Have Your Input Please’, and ‘Down Tools Corn Broom’.
Ben has exhibited extensively internationally, including Hordaland Art Centre Bergen, Wiels Brussels, MSU Zagreb, Tate Modern, South London Gallery, London’s National Portrait Gallery, MSU Belgrade, Brukenthal Museum Sibiu, Busan Biennial, and Manifesta amongst others.