Maddie Leach
About Maddie Leach
Fountains Failures Futures: The afterlives of public art – a free symposium in Lund, 28 & 29 September 2023.
Teaching focus: MFA Fine Arts programme; VCU01 Commissioning and Curating Contemporary Public Art.
Keywords: artistic practice/research; conceptual practices; publicness; place/site; narrative and writing within artistic practices.
Pronouns: she/they
Maddie Leach is an artist from New Zealand of Ashkenazi, English, and Scottish descent. She holds a PhD from the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. Before coming to Gothenburg in 2016, Maddie was a founding staff member, and programme director for the MFA Fine Arts, at Whiti o Rehua / The School of Art at Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand.
Maddie's sculptural projects include building an ice rink in a public gallery (2002) and a 16-foot sailboat for the roof of New Zealand’s national museum (2006). She has shipped a Eucalyptus tree across the Pacific Ocean from New Zealand to Chile, and back again (2006–07); sent 325 litres of water from the Te Waihou ‘Blue Spring' to Jakarta, where it vanished (2015); and coaxed a community of writers, businessmen, council officials and a newspaper editor to imagine a 'whale' made from 70 litres of used mineral oil and one-tonne of cement (2012–14). In 2017 she produced The Grief Prophesy album, working with two Swedish musicians and visual artist Necrolord to reinterpret an unremarkable black metal track into a powerful lament.
Maddie's work is recognised for its conceptual agility as elements of uncertainty and risk emerge in her process, and for the varied material resolution of her artworks – having fabricated objects or had them fabricated for her, used text and print media, worked with video, performative actions and processes of exchange.
She has worked with international curators Charles Esche, Claire Doherty, Hou Hanru, Nav Haq and Mercedes Vicente; Australian-based curators Blair French, Zara Stanhope and David Cross; and with New Zealand curators Christina Barton, Natasha Conland, Charlotte Huddleston, Abby Cunnane and Bruce Phillips. Maddie has been an artist in residence with Serlachius Museums (2019, Mänttä, Finland); CAG Field House Programme (2015, 2016, 2018, Vancouver, Canada); National Sculpture Factory (2008, Cork, Ireland); International Art Space (2014, Western Australia); Spike Island (2014, Bristol, UK) and Hyde Park Art Center (2008, 2010, Chicago, USA).
In September 2020, she received a four-year research grant from Formas (Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development) towards the project The fountain: An art-technological-social-drama.
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BEAUTY-STUDIO-LANGUAGE-ACT
Group
exhibition
Maddie Leach
Lokale, Griffenfeldtsgade 27, Copenhagen, Denmark. 17-24 September 2023. - 2023 -
Fountains Failures Futures: The afterlives of public
art
Maddie Leach, Mick Wilson, Cathryn Klasto, Lars-Henrik Ståhl
Fountains Failures Futures: The afterlives of public art - 2023 -
Taking on a Methodology of Avoidance: An Interview with Maddie Leach by Maibritt Borgen and Iris van der
Tuin
Maddie Leach, Iris van der Tuin, Maibritt Borgen
VADEMECUM - Thinking, Making, Doing Practice - 2023 -
"A place less interesting": Two months in Mandurah,
WA
Maddie Leach
On Care: A Journey into the Relational Nature of Artists' Residencies - 2022 -
Art school and the public sphere: Transcription of a presentation at Parallax Forum
2018
Maddie Leach
Parallax 2018–2022 - 2022 -
Engaging with Place: Ruin, Memory,
Regeneration
Maddie Leach
The Curatorial Thing: Audacious Landscapes - 2022 -
Making Artistic Research Public : EARN Working Group on
Methodology
Maddie Leach
EARN: European Artistic Research Network - 2022 -
'The Fountain: An art-technological-social drama'
Boverket Mål 11-veckan: Samverkan inom Gestaltad livsmiljö – ny forskning om konstnärliga och kulturhistoriska perspektiv i hållbart
samhällsbyggande.
Maddie Leach
Boverket Mål 11-veckan - 2022 -
Not fully present : Five artworks by Maddie
Leach
Maddie Leach
2021 -
Scandinavian Art Education: David Cross Interviews Maddie
Leach
Maddie Leach
NITRO: Non Traditional Research Outcomes - 2021 -
ARCtalks: Arterritory: Reposition / Reconfigure / Reanimate.
A webinar with Maddie Leach, Linde Ex, Pol Taverne.
March 10
2021
Maddie Leach
Artistic Research Community in the North (ARC) - 2021 -
The Fountain: An art-technological-social
drama
Maddie Leach
2020 -
Everyday
Research
Maddie Leach
Deakin University Downtown Gallery, Melbourne, Australia. 24 July – 01 September 2019. - 2019 -
Lowering Simon
Fraser
Maddie Leach
City of New Westminster, Canada. Commissioned by CAG (Contemporary Art Gallery), Vancouver, 2019. - 2019 -
Where do I end and you begin: The Grief
Prophesy
Maddie Leach
3rd PARALLAX Forum - Stereotypes & Storytelling: Research Strategies for Art Education - 2019 -
Lowering Simon
Fraser
Maddie Leach
City of New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada - 2019 -
One Day Sculpture: Ten Years
On
Maddie Leach
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia - 2019 -
A Park and a
Rock
Maddie Leach
Memory Connection - 2019 -
Projection Series #11: An Oceanic
Feeling
Maddie Leach
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand. 4 August —18 November 2018. - 2018 -
The Grief
Prophesy
Maddie Leach
Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art 2017 - 2017 -
The Grief Prophesy: Samtal om black metal, estetik och
minne
Maddie Leach, Thomas Bossius, Kristian Wåhlin
Göteborgs Konsthall - 2017 -
The Blue Spring / Mata Air
Murni
Maddie Leach
Jakarta Biennial, Indonesia - 2016