ABOUT

Matt Hunt was born in Palmerston North, New Zealand and now lives in Wellington. He graduated from Whanganui Polytechnic with a Bachelor in Fine Arts in 1997 and exhibits regularly with Peter McLeavey Gallery in Wellington and the New Standard Gallery in Sydney, Australia. In the past, he has also exhibited with Ivan Anthony gallery in Auckland and Ray Hughes gallery in Sydney.

Hunt also goes by the stage name ‘Ace Hurt’ and is a co-founding member of legendary Wellington indie alternative band, Cortina. He is also involved with his own band Reptilian Future Cops!!!

Excerpt from Ready to Roll exhibition catalogue, City Gallery Wellington

"There is a whole world in action in every one of Matt Hunt's paintings. Each is an episode drawn from a 'concept-world', a total cosmological index continuously forming - and in action - of images in the artist's imagination. Multiple scenarios occur within the brilliantly coloured landscape; a host of super-heros contend for supremacy within a super-situation. GOOD is at stake, EVIL menaces; the scene is poised in a conflict as archetypal as the creatures in it are extraordinary.

"The painting technique, in its drawing-like immediacy, lends these works their urgency. Visually attuned to a pre-3D era, the comic book and 1980s sci-fi film informs much of the imagery. Hunt's lingo is fundamentally dystopic, covering the spectrum of ecological, political and moral anxieties about the current state of the world, yet with a genuine concern about the spiritual fate of humanity."

Abby Cunnane, 2010