Maddie Leach: Andalucía 2007
Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Pakuranga, Manukau City
14 December 2007 - 28 February 2008
Andalucía is the area of Spain around its southern tip, the bottom quarter of the Iberian Peninsula. It is famous for the pronounced Muslim influence of much of its architecture, a result of its Moorish settlement for over 500 years during the Middle Ages. In the history of Art, the most famous Andalucians have been Picasso and Velasquez, and Bũnuel and Dali’s surrealist film ‘An Andalucian Dog’ is considered by film critic Roger Ebert to be the ‘most famous short film ever made.”
Maddie Leach is interested in the fact that there is an antipodal relationship between Andalucía and Auckland. In other words, if you drill a hole smack dab through the middle of the earth’s core from Pakuranga, it will come out in Andalucía. Using a website she has discovered that the exact antipodian site of Te Tuhi’s sculpture courtyard is an olive grove in Cortijo del Granadal, east of Olvera.
You would think this information would be the most exciting aspect of Leach’s project, that she would (like the Boyle family say) go to the site and either collect samples, or meet the grove owners or leasers and perhaps bring them back to Te Tuhi. Get a little communication started between the globally separated communities. Even a failed attempt would be interesting. But no, her project consists of getting a 4 metre hole dug, fencing it off with orange plastic netting for safety, and having a video loop indoors of the sun moving down across the sky, alluding to the famous Spanish heat. No social interaction at all, apart from the artist organising contractors to get the hole dug.
This is a lack-lustre project working with only half an idea: a global concept that should have been better developed and backed with trans-national resources such as satellite images or air travel. Leach is normally an impressively astute artist distinctive for her unflagging tenacity in overcoming the most technically difficult of physical and social obstacles, but this time she has been going through the motions, asleep on her feet.
