Matt Arbuckle, Wendelien Bakker
I’m Going in a Field

Matt Arbuckle’s work is grounded in the walks he would take around Pukekawa, Auckland Domain while his child was being treated in the nearby hospital. The photographs and paintings included in I am going in a field index a relationship between care, colour, and pathways that are revealed through repetition. Often working outside, Arbuckle’s paintings layer grass clippings and differently-weighted pigments, so that some colours sink in the solution, creating a hierarchy that conceptually corresponds to the medical test strips that would dictate the outcome of the day during this time.

Such ideas around parenting, time and the environment underpin Wendelien Bakker’s sculptural sundials and spun-straw labyrinth. Pocketfuls of raisins and dried fruit are bronze-cast as talismanic objects that gesture to a loss of control over time, replacing the numbered hours on the sundial. This impulse, to slow time down, is also embedded in the spiralling labyrinth. A labyrinth is a kind of parent-child form, where the way through is nestled inside the walls of the structure, suggesting a nurturing or protective journey through life.

Jane Wallace, September 2026