'Looking at Matt Arbuckle's paintings, there is a slippage in what appears to be in sight. The ambiguity he's fashioned creates space to focus on sensations of seeing and being: the adjustment of eyes, a settling in to somewhere or something else veiled and vast, the sheen of textile surfaces as you move across the room, bathing in colour, the sense that brought together like this, Arbuckle's canvases could be windows into new topographies.
Landscapes are an enduring feature of his practice – both in his thinking around place and in the perception of his work. The orientation of the three large canvases that anchor this body of work heightens this reading. It's new, this landscape format. It belies that there's a vista somewhere in the folds. You're staring beyond the windscreen at the ranges, you're losing the light.'
Matt Arbuckle is a New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based contemporary artist whose abstract painting practice thoughtfully explores the emotional resonance of place, memory, and materiality. Known for his atmospheric, layered compositions, Arbuckle engages with surface, texture, and colour to investigate the ways in which environments—both remembered and experienced—can be translated into visual form.
Two Rooms is a contemporary art exhibition venue located in a converted warehouse in Central Auckland, New Zealand. Opened in August 2006, Two Rooms presents a program of residencies and projects by leading International and New Zealand contemporary artists. The building houses two exhibition spaces, the Project Room and the Long Room.
