Craig Leonard's work combines research, performance, installation and interactivity. He is drawn to the radical possibilities of re-imagining obsolete, marginal, and enigmatic ideas and artifacts in new contexts. His recent work includes an interactive "noise intoner" at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax; handmade records for the Los Angeles punk band the Screamers at Raid Projects, Los Angeles; a series of mini-installations charting art/rock coincidences and convergences at Mercer Union, Toronto; a discussion about "obsolete concepts" with the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary; fieldwork for the Maritime History Archive in search of photographs in family albums of floating houses; and an in-depth and ongoing examination of the Cuban Independent Library Movement.
Interview with Emily Whalen, The Journal, Queen's University, Kingston, ON
Sean Flinn, 'Musical Layers Peeled Back in Sometimes Always', The Coast, Halifax, NS
Phlis McGregor, 'Celebrating a bicycle through art', CBC Radio [audio]
Sue Carter Flinn, 'A Blasted History of Noise', The Coast, Halifax, NS
Mercer Union Hall blog, 'The Mystery Surrounding Grapefruit'
Lauren Raham, 'Amusicology', Things of Desire, January 2009
Kate Underwood, 'Hard of Hearing', The Journal, Queen's University, Kingston, ON
Sue Siadat, 'Gift for the Screamers@Raid Projects', L.A. Record, 28 August 2007
Andrew Lochhead, 'ARChives', Canadian Art Magazine [pdf]
Peggy Gale, Master of Visual Studies catalogue essay, University of Toronto [pdf]
Archive Improv, 2009
Installation
Eyelevel Gallery, Halifax, NS
To mark Eyelevel Gallery's 35th anniversary, Archive Improv invited visitors to interact with the gallery's official archives through a basic request-based retrieval system. Each fulfilled request received a distinct space in an improvised treasury that grew over the course of the exhibition. Cabinets, cubbyholes, and hidden nooks housed modified archival documents that visitors were able to take away.
Archive Improv, 2009
Installation detail
Eyelevel Gallery, Halifax, NS
Archive Improv, 2009
Installation detail
Eyelevel Gallery, Halifax, NS
Archive Improv, 2009
Installation
Eyelevel Gallery, Halifax, NS
Archive Improv, 2009
Installation
Eyelevel Gallery, Halifax, NS
Archive Improv, 2009
Installation
Eyelevel Gallery, Halifax, NS
Archive Improv, 2009
Wall drawing, acrylic paint
36 x 40 in
Eyelevel Gallery, Halifax, NS
A detourned crest of Halifax's Department of Recreation painted onto the gallery wall.
Hunting in Mistletoe Forest, 2009
Video
25:00
In search of witch's brooms and dwarf mistletoe with botanist Cindy Ross on the outskirts of Kamloops, BC.
Adventures on the Wheels of Steel, 2009
Installation
Plywood cabinets, bike wheels, duct tape, light sensitive oscillators
Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax
An interactive project where op-art patterns created using duct tape on bike wheels generate distinct rhythm patterns as they affect light-sensitive oscillators hidden within plywood cabinets. Users can change up wheels and alter the oscillators' tones through the central control panel.
Adventures on the Wheels of Steel, 2009
Installation
Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax
Adventures on the Wheels of Steel, 2009
Studio view
Amusicology, 2009
Installation
Mercer Union (Toronto, ON)
A series of mini-installations, charting art/rock coincidences and convergences through sculptural inquiry, archival impulse and audio experiment. Subjects of exploration include King Tubby, DNA, Harry Partch, Jimmy Page, the Screamers and a web of others.
Bad Seeds, 2009
Wall drawing showing connections between bands and musicians
144 x 288 inches
Bad Seeds, 2009
Detail
Sunset Dub for King Tubby, 2009
Speaker cabinet, palm tree, yellow lightbulb, blue rug
An homage to King Tubby (1941-1989).
DNA's Grapefruit, 2009
Newsprint with silk-screened text, grapefruit
Takeaway newsprint to recruit interested participants in figuring out the "unknown date, unknown studio in Canada" in which No Wave band DNA recorded the track Grapefruit sometime in the early 1980s.
A Colour-Coding of Partch's Ptolemy Keyboard Based on his Chromelodeon I, 2008
Inkjet print
48 x 60 inches
The arbitrary colour scheme used by the American composer Harry Partch for the Chromelodeon I, a microtonal keyboard he constructed in 1945, is transferred here to Partch's preliminary instrument, the Ptolemy. The only record of the Ptolemy is a black and white photo. This colour print represents one 'octave' (comprised of 43 distinct notes) of the Ptolemy keyboard as it might have appeared if given the same colour-coding as the Chromelodeon I. The Ptolemy was misplaced by Partch sometime in the 1940s.
Ptolemy Triptych, 2008
Inkjet print
36 x 81 inches
Source documents for the print 'A Colour-Coding of Partch's Ptolemy Keyboard Based on his Chromelodeon I'
Michael Fernandes, 2008
Rubber-stamped signature, magazine
12 x 9 inches
Edition of 40
Rubber-stamped signature of artist Michael Fernandes beside his photograph on the cover of Arts Atlantic, Spring/Summer 1991.
Guitar Pieces (Jimmy Page / Robin Page), 2008
Two-channel video projection
A project based on coincidences connecting Canadian Fluxus artist Robin Page and legendary guitarist Jimmy Page through the performative destruction of guitars both in 1965.
Gift For The Screamers, 2007
Installation
Raid Projects, Los Angeles
Handmade records for members of the LA punk band the Screamers derived from a found demo-tape in the York University Archives, which the band submitted to Crash 'N' Burn (Toronto), one of the first punk venues in Canada. The club closed before the Screamers could perform. The recordings consist of 'Peer Pressure', 'Punish or Be Damned' and 'Eva Braun'. The records were created and shown as an installation at Raid Projects (Los Angeles), August 2007.
Gift For The Screamers, 2007
Handmade records
Raid Projects, Los Angeles
Gift For The Screamers, 2007
Installation
Raid Projects, Los Angeles
Gift For The Screamers, 2007
Handmade record
Gift For The Screamers, 2007
Installation
Raid Projects, Los Angeles
Gift For The Screamers, 2007
C-print
20 x 24 inches
Handmade record left for Tomata du Plenty (1948-2000), lead singer of the Screamers, at his memorial site in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, CA.
Mobile Homes, 2006
Found photo
Newfoundland experienced a controversial period of Resettlement (1954-75) of many of its isolated communities to more centralized "growth centres". For three months in 2006, I performed fieldwork for the Maritime History Archive in search of photographs depicting this historic time by visiting communities throughout the province, digitizing images in family photo albums, and adding the photos to the MHA's digital database.
Mobile Homes, 2006
Found photo
Mobile Homes, 2006
Map of Newfoundland 1953
Inkjet Print
60 x 72 inches
Using a road map published one year before the initialization of the province's resettlement program, communities that would eventually be abandoned during the period of 1954-75 have been blacked out.
Mobile Homes, 2006
Field Notes
Art Wicks of Badger's Quay, 2006
Video
08:50
Using his living room furniture for props, Art Wicks explains the method he used to float houses with a rope, oil drums and a winch during the resettlement of isolated outport communities in Newfoundland in the 1950-70s.
ARChives, 2006
Site-specific installation
Artcite (Windsor, ON)
From a series of interventions into the archives of artist-run centres in Ontario, including Modern Fuel (Kingston), Forest City Gallery (London), and Artcite (Windsor) with an accompanying bookwork: Artists in Artist-Run Centres, Ontario (1971-2006).
ARChives, 2006
Site-specific installation
Artcite (Windsor, ON)
ARChives, 2006
Site-specific installation
Artcite (Windsor, ON)
ARChives, 2006
Site-specific installation
Artcite (Windsor, ON)
Castro's Library (Biblioteca Dulce María Loynaz II), 2005
C-print
20 x 24 inches
An investigation into Cuba's network of independent libraries, including interviews with its advocates and adversaries within North American and European library associations. An attempt to understand the 'truth' behind opposing standpoints on the status of the libraries was at the core of the project. Photographs, video interviews, and a newspaper were created.
Castro's Library (Biblioteca Heberto Padilla), 2005
C-print
20 x 24 inches
Castro's Library, 2005
Installation
University of Toronto Art Centre
Castro's Library, 2005
Installation
University of Toronto Art Centre
Castro's Library, 2005
Installation
University of Toronto Art Centre
Biblio Files, 2005
Newspaper
Edition of 500
11 x 17 inches, 16 pages
A newspaper created to chronicle the debate, found in various sources from 1999-2005, within international library associations on the status of the Cuban independent libraries.
Tecsun, 2005
Emergency radio with hand-crank, plaque
Edition of 10
8 x 4 x 2 inches
Identical Chinese-made radio distributed in Cuba by the US Interests Section. The radio dial is said to have been soldered to the frequency of the Voice of America broadcast from Miami.
Tecsun, 2005
Detail
Vie et mort d'Odette Vioget, 2005
Installation
Phonograph, speaker horn, lacquer record
36 x 24 x 24 inches
An installation devoted to the fictional archive of Canadian Surrealist artist and poet Odette Vioget (1910-195?) presented at AXE NéO7 (Hull, QC), including a recorded poetry reading from 1937, documents, a bookwork and photographs.
Vie et mort d'Odette Vioget, 2005
Installation
AXE NéO7 (Hull, QC)
Vie et mort d'Odette Vioget, 2005
Installation
Poster, birth certificate, lacquer record
AXE NéO7 (Hull, QC)
Apparatus and Method (Odette Vioget), 2003
Bookwork in English/French
Edition of 50, 53 pages
8 x 5 x 0.5 inches
Obsolete Concepts, 2004
Bookwork
Second edition of 198, 87 pages
6.5 x 4 x 0.5 inches
Collection of obsolete concepts and their definitions taken from the complete Oxford English Dictionary. First edition published 2004; second edition 2008.
Obsolete Concepts (Antiprobabilism), 2004
C-print
36 x 48 inches
From a series of prints pointing to obsolete concepts, as categorized by the Oxford English Dictionary, in the word's last known site of publication.
A Kind Jester, 2004
Performance/Video
02:15
Rebuilding abandoned bikes in downtown Toronto.
A Kind Jester, 2004
Video still
A Kind Jester, 2004
Video still
A Kind Jester, 2004
Video still
Crumbs Are Also Bread, 2003
Site-specific installation
Stauffer Library, Queen's University, Kingston, ON
Collection of 'lost' books retrieved from the Canadian Literature section of Stauffer Library. By checking circulation cards in backs of books, texts not checked out of the library for more than 50 years but less than 100 were put on display in the library's main atrium.
Crumbs Are Also Bread, 2003
Site-specific installation
Stauffer Library, Queen's University, Kingston, ON
Collection of 'lost' books retrieved from the Canadian Literature section of Stauffer Library. By checking circulation cards in backs of books, texts not checked out of the library for more than 50 years but less than 100 were put on display in the library's main atrium.
Crumbs Are Also Bread, 2003
Bibliography
Published in Wegway, No. 8, 2003
Reunion, 2002
Installation
Gallery Display, Prague
A reunion with my former students from Beroun, CZ at Gallery Display, open to the public and sponsored by the Canadian Embassy in Prague.