City Art Rooms is pleased to present Trenton Garratt’s debut solo exhibition, Other Bedrooms, opening on 3 November, 5.30pm.
The selection of work for Other Bedrooms was conceived in the U.S.A. in 2008 while on a competitive scholarship awarded by the Henrietta and Lola Ann Tunbridge Trust. Whilst in New York during the height of summer, Garratt was confined to his apartment in the daytime due to extreme heat waves. During these spells of air-conditioned domestic restraint, he began developing ideas for future projects in sculpture, writing, painting, video and photography.
Garratt uses a conceptual approach based on his interest in the form and materiality of domestic personal effects. By exploring the intimacy that objects and scenes generate, Garratt creates personal vignettes that communicate a genuine sense of desire, longing, and nostalgia. Devoid of irony, the objects used in the narrative installations are directly linked to the artist’s personal biography. He will also exhibit selected drawings and paintings from his “Morning Pages”, a daily creative exercise ongoing since 2001. The process is limited to creating an A4 sized work in half an hour.
Trenton Garratt is based in Auckland and was the winner of the 2008 Young Blood Salon student artist competition while completing his Masters at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. The grand prize has provided him the opportunity to travel to Berlin and Europe for 3 weeks beginning on 10 November. An artist talk of his travels will be announced in the near future.
Trenton Garratt has recently exhibited in the group exhibition, Motel, at Bartley and Company Art, Wellington, Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington, and Stark White, Auckland.