| |
Maddie Leach
(b. Auckland, 1973; lives and works in Wellington, NZ)
COMMISSIONED BY Litmus Research Initiative
Maddie Leach, One Shining Gum (Savia Brillante), Museo de arte contemporaneo, Santiago de Chile, 2006; Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, 2007
The installation and site-specific practice of Wellington-based artist Maddie Leach proposes complex questions about the shifting roles of the public art gallery — and the artist — within the broader leisure and culture industries. In examining the spaces and social structures of recreational and cultural pursuits, Leach references conceptual and post-minimal sculpture, together with notions of sociality, community and exchange. Variously combining objects, images, sound and video projections, her installations merge aspects of the performative and the contemplative — testing and exploring ideas of audience spectatorship and participation. The Ice Rink And The Lilac Ship (Waikato Museum of Art and History, 2002) is a case in point. Comprising an 18-metre long, fully-functioning ice rink, accompanied by a video projection of a cruise ship drifting out of Wellington harbour on a calm evening, this sculptural installation creates a hybrid art experience which radically shifts the behavioural tropes conventionally operating in gallery space. In My Blue Peninsula a 4.9m plywood sailing boat, fabricated by the artist, was installed high and dry above the harbour on Te Papa’s outer sculpture court.
Further solo projects include Take Me Down To Your Dance Floor, Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2004) and Dear Dancer, Enjoy Public Art Gallery (2003). Select group exhibitions include Linked: connectivity and exchange, Govett Brewster Art Gallery (2005-06), High Tide: new currents in art from Australia and New Zealand, Lithuania (2006) and a recent commission for Trans Versa, The South Project, Santiago (2006).
Leach was born in Auckland in 1970. She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch and has lived and worked in Wellington since 1995.
One day sculpture project details to follow.
|
|
