Benjamin Shine, a Sculptor of Tulle Portraits, Also Folds Metal Like It’s Fabric

Benjamin Shine has spent nearly two decades transforming single pieces of tulle – the delicate netting often used in couture and bridalwear – into intricate portraits.

A graduate of the prestigious arts and design college Central Saint Martins, the British-born, Canberra-based artist became fascinated by fabric’s sculptural potential when he first studied fashion design. He later began experimenting with leftover fabric remnants from his clothing design work. “I said to myself, ‘I think I could design anything. I don’t see why it has to be just clothes,’” Shine says.

Shine developed a meticulous folding and ironing technique to create portraits made of tulle using a single piece of the material. In recent years, he’s collaborated with fashion houses like Givenchy and Maison Margiela on one-off collections and couture pieces, created custom window installations for luxury New York department store Bergdorf Goodman, and has been collected by Beyonce. His works are also held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

His latest body of work, 3Fold, explores the fold itself, through tulle and other mediums, including metal. Here, Shine talks about his technical process, his experience working with some of fashion’s biggest names and his latest exhibition.

How did your interest in working with fabric begin?

I was obsessed with one-piece pattern cutting – that’s making clothes from one piece, where you eliminate seams and try and be very clever technically. The result is that the clothes become quite sculptural, and they don’t necessarily fall into the realm of fashion anymore; they become exercises in design and technicality. By the time I left Central Saint Martins, I was really more interested in working with fabric as a medium to sculpt and create forms and shapes, which was a bit scary because textile art really wasn’t that visible at the time. I started making artworks using all these fabric remnants I had left over from four or five years of fashion studies.

Tulle, in particular, became your muse. And you developed a special technique to work with it.

[I thought], “Could [tulle] be manipulated in an origami kind of way to make a portrait, like, what’s the most complicated, difficult thing that could be done?” I thought, “If I can do that, I can probably do anything.”

I didn’t like the idea of sewing because of the added element of lots of string. I wanted it to be completely clean. I figured out I could use the garment construction techniques I picked up along the way during my fashion studies, even though that’s probably not what they’re really for. I worked out how, with the heat of the iron, I could actually get the tulle to stay where I wanted it to.

I use one piece of tulle and begin with the eyes. Then, it’s a case of just refining and tweaking for hours and hours. The tweaking is absolutely insane, but that’s all it can be.

How long do your pieces take to make?

They can get up to at least 250 hours, some of the detailed portraits. There was an installation I did in Canberra – it was two walls in a shopping centre that were 15 metres long and three metres tall each, so that took months.

You’ve worked with Givenchy and Maison Margiela, two of fashion’s most influential houses. You created a limited-edition tulle-infused sportswear line for Givenchy and a tulle-face trench coat for Maison Margiela. How did those projects come about?

The answer is boring because both [opportunities] came through emails, but they were great emails to receive – especially because I’d studied fashion. It felt like a full circle moment: I’d gone off and away from fashion, and here I was being invited back in.

These two projects were quite different in terms of the pieces that were made, but my role was essentially the same. In the case of Givenchy, [there were] specific images for me to interpret. They were mixing sportswear with couture, so we made three sweatshirts. They were the first to ever call me an artist – I’d not been called that in the media, and I’d never really promoted myself as that, but [Givenchy] did that, which opened up much more of the art world to me.

With John [Galliano], the concept was more open-ended, so the piece – a coat – developed organically. John had an initial idea and we developed the piece over the course of about four months in Paris at the Maison Margiela atelier.

How did your work come to be part of Beyonce’s art collection?

I did the Bergdorf Goodman windows in New York and on the second day they went up, I got a call from Beyonce’s management team asking if I would be interested in working with these two young singers, Chloe and Hallie, who I’d never heard of, but when they sent me the music, I said yes within three seconds.

In the course of doing this project, the management team said, “Could you send us your portfolio of works, because there’s interest from Mr and Mrs Carter.” I sent it through, and the next day, they just ordered a piece straight away. It was a metal sculpture that I’d recently done, which looks like a person sitting in a lotus position.

I went to install the piece and meet them at their house in LA. We talked about where to place it and looked around the grounds. They decided they wanted to put it right by their front door, so as you came down the driveway you would see it.

You recently had your debut solo show, 3Fold, in Sydney. Tell us about it.

It allows the viewer to be able to see the start or genesis of an idea, and how it can take on completely three different routes. The basis is the fold – that’s the starting point. Tulle paintings, mixing and combining colours using the transparent nature of the material, through folding and bunching and layering – that’s one form of using the fold.

Another series called Fold [featured] powder-coated aluminium. It takes the core component of the tulle work and expands it into laser-cut metal mesh reliefs. I took it to a metal fabricator and they said, “There’s no way you can fold a piece of metal that way.” I figured out a way to do it myself in the end, and I took it back to them and said, “I’ve done it now!”

Nexus was a play on cause and effect with resin-infused pleated felt works transformed into solid sculptural forms. What happens when two different shapes come into contact or infiltrate a soft cloth or canvas? How does it respond and what compositions emerge?

Benjamin Shine’s works are on show at the Intercontinental Sydney Double Bay until December, 2025.

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