Matt

Hej! Kia Ora! Hi! Three months ago I received an email from @aostudiosnz asking if I would like to design a pop up for @ikeanewzealand for Christchurch and Wellington. Oh man. Hell yes. I’ve waited 48 years for an email like that. I had to sign an NDA (anyone who knows me knows how hard it was so hard for me not to tell anyone) and had two weeks to do two concepts for Ch Ch and Welly. So I drew and drew and drew, and many happy sleepless nights and mornings later, Yesterday we had the opening and today it was finally opened to the public! The Arthouse pop up is an art gallery showing eight kiwi artists works based on IKEA products. So epic. I did so many designs for the gallery which I will share later! But the one we ended up with worked so well. The ikea blue hue in the interior was a happy surprise and made all the artworks pop. Big massive thanks and big ups to Paul and Scott at AO for super project managing this big undertaking in such a tight time frame with so many moving parts, and to Greg and his amazing build team at @rollercoasterdesign for working out how to prefab it and flat pack into the containers IKEA style and build it so well. Also big ups to the IKEA Australia team for all your hard work to make it what it is! Also big ups for @shadowlotivy for his crazy speedy rhino modelling and late night rendering under tight deadlines to send to IKEA in Australia and Sweden for sign off (will share soon too). Team work makes the dream work! It’s open now for three weeks 10am to 6pm each day for three weeks so pop down if ya in Christchurch and check it out! Also keep and eye out of seven sharp Thursday night. And Welly opening on next week on Thursday 27th Nov! Finally big thanks to my bestie @kyliebladderstone for coming up from Dunedin for the opening, who would have thought building the real pyramid schemer ten years ago in his garage at Muriwai would result in us ending up here! Chur! M 💙💙💙💛💛💛 #ikeanewzealand #arthouse #ikea #nz #chch #bluedream