I am with what has been given away

Ben Orkin has been building form with clay for many years, having grown up surrounded by the objects of his mother, ceramicist Gemma Orkin. Since 2018, Orkin has been wholly dedicated to exploring clay. Mentored by Jane Alexander at Michaelis School of Fine Art (University of Cape Town), he graduated with a BFA in 2021 and has since had several solo exhibitions both locally and abroad. In 2022, Orkin attended the OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH’s Academy of Ceramics residency program in Linz (Austria) and a body of his work showed at Miart’s Fiera Internazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Milan. Orkin’s hand-coiled works are something other than vessels, they are bodies, full of air and sensitivity. Orkin works in the corporeal-linguistic nexus (at the gentle, probing press between love and letters), exploring queer histories – from the quotidian to the grand, from tragic to triumphant. The erotics of protrusion and recession press through the clay and speak in soft voices like lovers.