Double Grammar Zone
Matt Henry
4 June - 16 July 2022
Matt Henry’s Double Grammar Zone borrows a real estate marketing term that promotes residential properties within the prestigious zoning catchments of Auckland Grammar and Epsom Girls’ Grammar schools. In this exhibition, the phrase also refers to language, the real estate and art markets, and the visual grammar of abstraction and advertising.
Redacted real estate signs photographed in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington are printed on the same plastic corflute material as the objects they depict – an analogous play between the fields of housing, finance, design and contemporary art.
Double Grammar Zone is the inaugural PHOTO OP. exhibition and the first release of PHOTO OP. Editions.
Matt Henry, Redaction 5750, 2021-22, courtesy of the artist
Matt Henry, Redaction 5746, 2021-22, courtesy of the artist
Matt Henry, Redaction 5766, 2021-22, courtesy of the artist
Matt Henry, Redaction 5558, 2020-22, courtesy of the artist
Matt Henry, Redaction 5629, 2021-22, courtesy of the artist
Double Grammar Zone, installation view, photo courtesy of the artist.
Double Grammar Zone, installation view, photo courtesy of the artist.
Matt Henry, Redaction 3034, 2016-22, courtesy of the artist
Double Grammar Zone, installation view, photo courtesy of the artist.
Double Grammar Zone, installation view, photo courtesy of the artist.
ARTIST BIO
Matt Henry (born 1973) lives and works in Wellington, New Zealand. Henry’s paintings, photographs and installations play with the minimalist idiom, summoning new readings and contextual shifts through altered scale, media and materials. Often incongruous, his paradoxically mimetic form of non-objective art invites interactions between art and the everyday.
Henry received an MFA from Melbourne’s RMIT University in 2008, and his work is held in public and private collections including the Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade, and Elevation Capital Art Collection.
His exhibition highlights include: Space Suit, Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2018); Long Division, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (2016); Personal Recordings, Goya Curtain, Tokyo (2016); High Fidelity, Starkwhite, Auckland (2013); From the series 16:9, Sydney Non Objective (2012); Melbourne International Art Fair (2012); User Friendly, Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Auckland (2011); Vernacular Painting, Starkwhite, Auckland (2011); and Contraflow, Starkwhite, Auckland (2010).