‘The interface of an Australian posturing around work ethic and the derogatory implications of artists’ lifestyles sets the tone for Ben Aitken’s latest body of work, presented at Sutton Projects. With a painter’s eye to composition and a tradesperson’s honouring of labour, Aitken weaves together a ‘yeah-nah’ attitude with a semi-fetishised material acuity. Object, image and text are put to play in his work, blurring divisions between high and low, art and design, the artist’s hand and the found object. A desire to unlock complex notions of identity, and the authorship of clichéd colloquialism and anonymous digital communications, propels Aitken’s assemblages of form and meaning’.

– Dr. Kent Wilson