Gallery 5

Maddie Leach's installation Gallery 5 engages the gallery space as a site of stasis and solitude. Finding allies for the gallery in the public spaces of airports, lobbies, waiting rooms, universities, and more recently leisure facilities such as bowling greens and gymnasiums, Leach has transformed the rear exhibition space and storage room of The Physics Room into a stark homage to public swimming pools and their ancillary spaces.

Evolving from an interest in the way that the forms and ideals of modernism have informed these public spaces, the abstracted changing rooms, locker bays, coat rooms, and poolside seating of Gallery 5 achieve a peculiar suspension of time. Merging anticipation and boredom, the resituation of this poolside aesthetic within the The Physics Room establishes an ambiguous relationship with the two concurrent exhibitions. It offers viewers seating for rest and respite, cooling breezes through a pale blue shutter, the familiar-yet-uneasy presence of a concrete block wall, and a place to put their bags while they visit the rest of the show.

Reviews, Essays & Articles
Showing of three
Christchurch star, 1999 Dec. 22, p. B5
Face to Face/The Minimalist Massacre Part II, by Sean Kerr; Gallery 5 by Maddie Leach; exhibiton by Simen Johan.