Matt Arbuckle
Beatbox Blues Harp
22 February - 25 March 2017
Matt Arbuckle is a New Zealander who lives in Melbourne. Arbuckle draws on landscape and photography in works of painting and drawing that are predominantly abstract and ultimately concerned with formalist issues of space, composition and mark-marking. Arbuckle collects, collages and draws on discarded and found papers and documents. In his drawings, as with his photographs of his surroundings, formal compositional qualities of objects, texture and shape are privileged over representation. These drawings and photographs are both works in their own right and foundations for his paintings, which further abstract the compositions. Arbuckle seeks to disrupt pictorial planes and construct spaces through the layering of fields of colour with bold gestural marks. He mediates the spatial experience of his paintings through the use of screens and creating suspended installations of his works.
Arbuckle has held solo exhibitions at Tim Melville Gallery, Auckland (2016, 2015); PAULNACHE, Gisborne NZ (2016, 2014, 2012); Neo Space, Melbourne (2016); Fontanelle Gallery, Adelaide (2015); Brunswick Lake Gallery (2015); Chapter House Lane, Melbourne (2015); Augusto, Auckland (2014); Studio-Baustelle, Berlin (2013); Holborn Building Space, London (2013).
Arbuckle has participated in group exhibitions at galleries including Baustelle Gallery, Berlin (2016); Auckland Art Fair (2016); Waikato Museum, NZ (2016); Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra (2016); TCB Art Inc, Melbourne (2016); Praxis Artspace, Adelaide (2016); Hanging Valley, Melbourne (2016); Morrinsville Whare Toi Wallace Gallery, NZ (2015); M Contemporary, Sydney (2015); Fort Delta, Melbourne (2015); Tristian Koenig, Melbourne (2014); Melbourne Art Fair (2014); Sydney Contemporary (2015); 30 Upstairs, Wellington (2014); Studio 40, Auckland (2014); BaumgartenBrandt Rechtsanwalte, Berlin (2014); Studio-Baustelle, Berlin (2013); Bucker Project Space, Berlin (2013); and Ninety Gallery, Auckland (2011). His work is held in the Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki and James Wallace Arts Trust and he has been a finalist for the The National Contemporary Art Award, NZ (2016) and Wallace Art Awards (2016, 2015, 2014, 2011, 2009). He is represented in New Zealand by Tim Melville Gallery and PAULNACHE.
