Maddie Leach
About Maddie Leach
The fountain: An art-technological-social drama
Maddie Leach is an artist from New Zealand of Scottish, English and Ashkenazi descent. She now lives in Gothenburg, Sweden and is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at HDK–Valand Academy of Art & Design.
Maddie holds a PhD from Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. She came to Gothenburg in March 2016 from Wellington, New Zealand, where she was program director of the MFA and a founding staff member at Whiti o Rehua / The School of Art at Massey University.
Her 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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"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 -
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 -
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