Matt Arbuckle
The Punch
8 November - 20 December 2025

The Punch (2019–2025) is a series of paintings by Matt Arbuckle, created on industrial wooden guillotine blocks once used at the Justincraft Textile Factory in Naarm/ Melbourne. The blocks are painted over with thick layers of acrylic, which seal in dust and peeling wood and glaze over forgotten logos—ghostly and scattered across their surfaces. What emerges is an assembly of forms we attempt to give meaning to: pattern pairings, grids and cubes, emphasised with muted industrial tones. The repurposing of fabric cutting guillotines loops the new works back to Arbuckle's textile practice and his use of voile. They continue his practice of salvaging forgotten objects, opening a dialogue with his practice, the utilitarian history of the blocks, and the stories that are formed in between.

Matt Arbuckle is an Aotearoa/New Zealand-born artist living and working between Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and Naarm/Melbourne. Arbuckle has a BFA from Unitec Institute of Technology, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2009), and has held solo exhibitions at Daine Singer (Melbourne), Two Rooms (Auckland), Hastings City Art Gallery (New Zealand), Bus Projects (Melbourne), Parlour Projects (Hawks Bay, New Zealand), Paulnache Gallery (Gisborne, New Zealand), Vermont Studio Center (USA), and Baustelle Gallery (Berlin).

He has participated in group exhibitions including at ChaShama (New York), Drill Hall Gallery (Canberra), Hugo Michell Gallery (Adelaide), TCB (Melbourne), Hanging Valley (Melbourne), Caves (Melbourne), Haydens (Melbourne), The Pah Homestead, TSB Wallace Arts Trust (Auckland), Gowlangsford (Auckland), Laree Payne (Hamilton), and Salamanca Arts Centre (Hobart). Arbuckle has participated in art fairs including Aotearoa Art Fair, Sydney Contemporary, Melbourne Art Fair, and Spring1883.

Arbuckle was the recipient of the 2017 James Wallace Art Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center, USA, followed by a solo exhibition there in 2018. In 2020–21 he was invited to present a solo exhibition at Hastings City Art Gallery, Aotearoa New Zealand. In 2021 he undertook a residency at Driving Creek, Coromandel, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Arbuckle’s work is held in the Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, the Wallace Arts Trust Collection, Driving Creek Potteries, New Zealand, and the Arthur and Suzie Roe Collection, Melbourne. In 2022 Arbuckle was a recipient of the Melbourne Art Fair’s large-scale installation commission Beyond, supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants and the Melbourne Art Foundation.

In 2025 RIM Books published Place to Place, a new book bringing together Arbuckle’s works from 2019 - 2025, focusing on recent exhibitions: Bow Echo (2023) at Two Rooms Gallery, Auckland and Subduction and Abduction (2024) at Daine Singer, Melbourne, with essays by Lucinda Bennett and Emily Cormack.

“The path that led Matt to the blocks loops back to his practice using voile, which has been his primary support in recent years. He happened across the blocks whilst visiting Justincraft as they were closing down, being given free rein to go through the rolls of fabric that were left behind. The objects initially caught his interest as formal arrangements or abstractions, but after understanding their use and history from G, they began to hold a narrative through their process and story. Both his use of voile and the blocks in The Punch involve the same methodical process, which opens itself up to chance—alchemical reactions of pigment and the earth in which the voile is buried to cure. The chance and the reaction leave behind traces: grass clippings, sawdust, maybe a stray anonymous hair. ”

— Romily Plourde Marbrook

Read the catalogue essay by ROMILY PLOURDE MARBROOK