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.
PHOTO OP. is a new curatorial platform for contemporary art in lens-based media founded by Emil
McAvoy.
PHOTO OP.’s first season of exhibitions is hosted by Skar Image Lab.
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).
Auckland Festival of Photography Exhibition
PHOTO OP. Instagram
EyeContact review by John Hurrell
D-Photo Interview with PHOTO OP. curator Emil McAvoy
PHOTO OP. Gallery Information
PHOTO OP. Website
