Matthew Buckingham

Born 1963, Nevada, Iowa, USA.
Lives and works in New York City, USA.

Matthew Buckingham is interested in the ways in which we tell the stories of our lives – the ways in which we try to make sense of our experiences by putting them into some kind of order, making narratives out of them. Although primarily a film-maker, Buckingham uses all kinds of materials – from postcards to plaques on bus-shelters – to explore the ways we look at the world and to shake us up by suggesting new ways of looking. For the International 06, he will focus on Liverpool’s docks: using as his starting-point a story by Herman Melville, who graphically described his own first encounter with Liverpool as a sailor in his 1849 novel Redburn, Matthew Buckingham will look at where the story of Liverpool’s docks might be going at the start of the twenty-first century.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2005 Timelines, Kunstverein und Kunstmuseum St Gallen, Switzerland
Currents 94: Matthew Buckingham, St Louis Art Museum, St Louis, MO, USA

2004 Concentrations 44: Matthew Buckingham, A Man of the Crowd, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX, USA

2003 A Man of the Crowd, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria

2002 Definition, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY, USA

2001 Sandra of the Tuliphouse or How to Live in a Free State (with Joachim Koester), x-rummet, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark

2000 Situation Leading to a Story, Galleri Tommy Lund, Copenhagen, Denmark

Selected Group Exhibitions

2006 Harun Farocki, Matthew Buckingham, Amie Siegel, Kunst-Werke, Berlin, Germany

2005 In Absentia, d’Art Passerelle, Brest, France
Universal Experience: Art, Life and the Tourist’s Eye, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, USA

2004 Faces in the Crowd, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK 
Common Property, Werkleitz Biennale, Halle, Germany

2003 Territories, Kunst-Werke, Berlin, Germany
Homeland, Whitney ISP, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY, USA

2002 Nostalgia, Art In General, New York, NY, USA

2001 Definition, Murray Guy, New York, NY, USA

2000 May Day Vienna, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, Austria
Greater New York, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY, USA

Selected Screenings

2005 Cine y casi cine, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain
MediaScope, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA

2004 Identify! or Studies on a Political Subject, The New School, New York, NY, USA

2003 Matthew Buckingham, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany

2000 Three Films by Matthew Buckingham, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK

Further Reading

Jennifer Allen, ‘Clues, Shadows and Faces – Interview with Matthew Buckingham’, Metropolis M, 5 (2004), pp. 95–106

Matthew Buckingham, Sandra of the Tuliphouse or How to Live in a Free State, Copenhagen: x-rummet, Statens Museum for Kunst, 2001

Matthew Buckingham, Subcutaneous, artist’s book, New York: Murray Guy/Shark Books, 2001

Anselm Franke, ‘A Man of the Crowd: annotated associations with Edgar Allan Poe’s tale “The Man of the Crowd”’, in Untitled (Experience of Place), ed. Gregor Neuerer, London: König Books Ltd/Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König, 2003

Anselm Franke, ‘Matthew Buckingham’, Parkett, 72 (2004), pp. 6–16