Author: Mike Leggett

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The Pneu Life

The Pneu Life was commissioned by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, editors of the remarkable publication,CANTRILL’S FILMNOTES, published between 1971 and 2000 in 100 issues.
Written not long after migrating to Australia with partner and child from England, it sets out to survey idiosyncratically the theory and practice of moving image making at that point in time, predominantly of my own professional practice but also reflecting on that of others. There are ten sections in the PDF (at left): The Immigrant, The Student, The Teacher, The Filmmaker, The Editor, The View, The Critic, The Film Viewer, The Theoretical, The Installation. For reasons that were never quite clear to me, several artists in Melbourne were upset by the article.

1989
Mike Leggett

Kultur Speziell

The Kultur Speziell team from Austrian Television (ORF) visited the 1973 Avant-Garde Film Festival at the National Film Theatre and other venues in London. Unlike the British media who took no interest at all in the event, the Austrian team spent several days at the Festival, filming some of the events and performances, and interviewing various of the attendees. They approached me for an interview and I suggested that I could instead, using their crew and equipment, make the film that would respond to the question:”Why did you want to make this film?”. The program that was later broadcast in Austria included the piece uncut and concluded as half-hour report that was unpatronising and positive. In the late 1990s Peter Mudie recovered the program from ORF from which these stills were taken. (See more under Performance).

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This was the scene between performances outside the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), one of the venues during the Festival. David Crosswaite at the top of the steps, Mike Leggett and Valie Export foreground right.

1973
ORF (Austrian Television)

Kultur Speziell

The Kultur Speziell team from Austrian Television (ORF) visited the 1973 Avant-Garde Film Festival at the National Film Theatre and other venues in London. Unlike the British media who took no interest at all in the event, the Austrian team spent several days at the Festival, filming some of the events and performances, and interviewing various of the attendees. They approached me for an interview and I suggested that I could instead, using their crew and equipment, make the film that would respond to a question. The performance commenced with me switching on the camera, the program host asking the question “Why did you want to make this film?”. As I zoomed into the words Picture and Sound on the editing machine against which the interview leaned, I spoke about the process of making a film, before zooming and out, walking round in front of the camera and then leaning into shot to switch it off. The program that was later broadcast in Austria included the piece uncut and concluded as half-hour report that was unpatronising and positive. In the late 1990s Peter Mudie recovered the program from ORF from which these stills and the extract were taken. (More in Reviews and Citations)

1973
1-min

Mike Leggett

1980
FilmMakers on Tour

The Film-makers on Tour scheme was administered by the Arts Council of Great Britain, to encourage wider exhibition of artists working with film (and later video), by subsidising the cost of a filmmaker attending a venue to introduce a program of films. Over several years British film and video artists visited many different audiences and parts of Britain and the Scheme was most successful when artists were able to tour consecutively to venues in the same region. (See more in South West Film Tour, in South West Film Directory (1980)

Closed Circuit Video Installation

A substantial body of published PhD research into international artists use of close-circuit television (CCTV) in video installations in the 1960s and 1970s. Available in the left column is a downloadable PDF from the 1000 pages of the sections describing work made in Britain and Australia.
Original in German: Closed Circuit Videoinstallationen : Ein Leitfaden zur Geschichte und Theorie der Medienkunst mit Bausteinen eines Künstlerlexikons. Logos Verlag, Berlin, ISBN: 3-8325-0600-4
© 2004-2005 bei dem Autor und Verlag. Slavko Kacunko, Düsseldorf http://www.slavkokacunko.de Logos Verlag, Berlin http://www.logos-verlag.de

2005
Slavko Kacunko

Art Demands a New Breed of Programmer

1996
Mike Leggett

The article written for the Sydney Morning Herald on the 23rd April 1996 centers on the work of Gideon May. As a commercial programmer based in Holland, he was attending the new media conference organised by the Australian Film Commission, having worked extensively with artists, including Sydney-based artist Bill Seaman. The article – top left – refers to several artists, the Burning the Interface exhibition at the MCA and ZKM Centre in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Outside the Grounds of Obscenity and Inside the Grounds of Hyde Park

1975
3 days

A closed-circuit video (CCTV) performance installation (May 16th – 18th) commissioned for The Video Show at the Serpentine Gallery, Hyde Park, London, May 1975. A prepared videotape of 42-minutes duration, recording the scene through the gallery windows, is progressively edited following a predetermined schema, with inserts of the same scene recorded at later periods in the performance. (Catalogue page, audience notes and documentation photos top left. An analysis of the final tape is currently in progress to determine how the installation performance developed over the three days.)

Julie-Anne Long at Bundanon (Video essay)

Performer Julie-Anne Long describes with Virginia Baxter, the experience of being an artist-in-residence at the Bundanon Trust studios, on the banks of the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales Australia. Together they discuss the process of preparing a new performance work involving character, costume, movement and music. Photographs by Heidren Löhr. (10-minutes)

2009
Mike Leggett

Thinking Through the Body (Video essay)

‘Thinking Through The Body ArtLab 08’ is an interdisciplinary research project exploring the use and potential of touch, movement and proprioception (the sense of ones position and volume in space) in body-focused interactive art practices. Project participants are: Catherine Truman, Garth Paine, George Khut, George Khut, Jonathan Duckworth, Lian Loke, Lizzie Muller, Maggie Slattery and Somaya Langley. The project has been supported through the Australia Council, Inter-Arts Offices ‘ArtLab 2008′ initiative and generously supported by Campbelltown Arts Centre, the Bundanon Trust and Performance Space. (11-minutes)

2009
Mike Leggett

From Botany to Bundanon (Video essay)

2011
Mike Leggett

The Dutch artist Jan Hendrix meets with local naturalist, Jim Wallis. Jim has been studying the fauna and flora of the Bundanon Trust property on the banks of the Shoalhaven River in New South Wales since the mid-1970s. He shares his archive with Jan during this the artist’s third residency. Hendrix develops further his ideas using the flora of Bundanon upon which many of his prints and sculptures are based. A resident of Mexico City for the past 35 years, his new work is informed by the botanical specimens collected by Joseph Banks in Botany Bay in 1777, some of which are found on the Shoalhaven. (12-minutes)