MATT ARBUCKLE
PUBLIC CAPACITY
18 July - 22 AugUST
Opening 2-4pm Saturday 18 July
Matt Arbuckle’s Public Capacity draws inspiration from the hospital environment and experience of illness and the health system. Within an installation of Arbuckle’s pigment-stained voile works, here reminiscent of cubicle curtains, Arbuckle has placed geometric works on paper, formed of medical pH strips. The works look at the measurement and delineation of the body, space, illness, and time.
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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.
“In Auckland City Hospital’s labyrinth of linoleum floors, you will find multi-coloured lines snaking through various wards and hallways. The lines are colour coded, and enable the visitor to orient themselves throughout the building. The problem with following a line is that you don’t immediately know what direction to follow; to find out you have to start walking. Matt Arbuckle’s exhibition Public Capacity centers on this concept of colour as guide and trajectory, stemming from the four months Arbuckle and his family spent in Starship Children’s Hospital, while his son Francis underwent life-saving surgeries.”
