The Making of our Archie Rose X Benja Mardi Gras Campaign
Our latest artist partner for our Tailored Gin Mardi Gras Label is local paper engineer and artist, Benja Harney, of Paperform Studio. We pulled up a stool next to Benja and asked him to share the story of our Mardi Gras collaboration.
How do you feel about Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras?
I think Gadigal country has an amazing capacity for queer joy and celebration. I don't think it's an accident that Mardi Gras happened here. There's something about this place that has real power and energy. You know, World Pride a couple of years ago was a really dynamic moment in Sydney's history with relation to the queer scene and our city. It was really powerful and it focused a lens on Sydney in a way that, as someone who's been going to Mardi Gras for many, many years now, I'd never seen before, and I was so proud of our city at that moment.
Certainly, growing up, it was a very creative, vivacious scene to be a part of. I think as I've gotten older, I'm not in the centre of the scene so much anymore. But, it's an amazing city. It's a beautiful place with beautiful people. We're just very lucky.
As a young person kind of growing up in this, in the scene, it was a very dynamic, rich place full of energy and colour and incredible people. And it's always been very celebratory. I can kind of see that legacy continuing on now. There's a whole bunch of creative people, young and old, that live in this city, and there's a real sense of community as well. I think that's very important to making beautiful art, and being creative as having a great community around you.
How did you find your niche working with paper?
How did I find my niche? Um, look, I think I got lucky. I say it's serendipity. It's been a lot of hard work to get to where I am, but I think it was serendipity, really, because, as a young person, I really didn't kind of know what I wanted to do.
I had lived overseas in England for a couple of years, and I came back a little bit rudderless and not knowing what to do. I had been encouraged by a friend of mine to study graphic design. And it was during that process at Enmore TAFE that I went to— an incredible school here in Sydney—we had a really basic class in paper engineering. It was part of design at that time.
I got really excited because when I was at college, which was 20 years ago now, it was all about the internet and digital. You know, everyone was learning all that kind of digital stuff, but I just kind of found paper in that moment and it was, I don't know, it just really reminded me of being a kid almost.
It's very playful and really analogue and something different and I think that's what excited me was the process of making something. I love building things and making things. I have always had this, since I was a kid. I really wanted to do something with my life that was different and my own thing, not kind of what other people had done.
How did you feel about the brief when you received it from Archie Rose?
I've been very excited because, obviously, Archie Rose's campaigns for Mardi Gras have become iconic. And Archie Rose is an iconic Australian brand. So, to be given the opportunity to collaborate with Archie Rose is a great honour. I pitched a whole different bunch of ideas, but it was mainly around flowers. Now, if I've got to be honest, I don't think anyone's made more paper flowers than me in the world. I've made a lot of paper flowers. So I was like, oh, flowers, you know, here we go again. But actually something amazing happened in this, in this collaboration with Archie Rose, where I don't know, like I was making these beautiful flowers and we were kind of adding it in this really incredible, interesting pattern and we obviously created this layered set. The process has been really interesting because the initial idea was the mirrorball. Which is obviously a very celebratory object, refracting light around.
But something happened when it came in front of the camera and it got photographed and it just kind of took on its own life. Which doesn't always happen, but something magic happened in this moment, and it's turned out to be, without a doubt, one of my favourite projects I've ever done in the 20 years I've been working.
It's really magic, it's beautiful, it's brightly coloured, it's celebratory, it's textured. It's so many of the things that paper is really good at and it's all here in this campaign. So, yeah, it's really exciting. I'm thrilled.
How do you bring your ideas to life?
A good shot of Archie Rose gin? Hahaha. I don't know. Creativity is a really interesting thing. And I've been at my desk for 20 years making things now. And how do you constantly reinvent the same material over and over again? I often wonder about that. Where do ideas come from? I think you've got to keep your eyes open. I think you've got to remain open-hearted and open-minded and taking inspiration from the things you see around you is really important and just making sure that you're, yeah, aware of your surroundings because quite often I've found that ideas can come from the urban environment.
I'm obviously very inspired by the natural environment because paper can represent nature really beautifully, but also in the urban environment, some things are manmade that can sometimes inform, you know, the shape of things or the way things sit together. Or so yeah, it's, I think it's just really about remaining open to what's going on around you, but then also being hard work, being dedicated because often, creativity is really a tricky beast sometimes.
It's not always there and it's hard to get started sometimes. But if you start something, even if you're not really happy with it, at least you've got something that you can refer back to, and you go home and you come back the next day and you think, well, I don't really like that, but at least I know I don't need to do that or I can try another path.
How did you land on each flower? Which is your favourite?
They're all native Australian flowers that we chose because I think that's really important. Obviously, Archie Rose is an Australian company, and so I think it was important to kind of reflect on where we're from and our perspective. They're not exact copies of the native flowers because, I mean, native flowers generally tend to be incredibly detailed and really hard to replicate in paper, so we've kind of taken a few liberties, but on the whole, they are native flowers. I chose all the colours that suited our progressive pride rainbow of colours. As for my favourite flower, it's probably the Kangaroo Paw. Because I love the shape of it, it's so iconic. It's very different from other flowers. So I was lucky; I felt lucky that we could squeeze that one into this creation.
