Less is More: Minimal and Post-Minimal Art in Australia [withdrawal]

01/09/2012 withdrawal of ABC art: red cube from the exhibition upon receiving the exhibition’s catalogue and reading the curatorial premise for the work’s inclusion, where I gave reasons for the withdrawal that include:

[The curatorial essay mentions] my art (with reference to Floor plan: Empty, except) within the context of Robert Morris’ essay. Not only is this misrepresentative of the place from which my art stems, but I hadn’t even read his notes on Sculpture at that time! Not until some years later. 

The text in my art is not narrative. It does not tell a story about Jack and Jill running over a hill that exists externally to the sculptuation it is in. If it were narrative, it would not read the way it does, often stilted, chopped, awkward, blocky, non eventful, monotonous, etc. […] The text is not a bad nor a good story — it’s not a story at all. It functions as a spatial aspect of the sculptuation, that’s all. So people walk away disappointed with my art, with the conclusion I’m a bad writer. But the text has nothing to do with being a writer.

Gail Hastings, excerpts from email to the curator, 31 August 2012

Exhibition
Date: 03/Aug/2012 to 04/Nov/2012
Curated by: Sue Cramer
At: Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne
Artists:

Carl Andre, Lynda Benglis, Peter Booth, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, Ian Burn, Peter Cripps, John Davis, A.D.S. Donaldson, Richard Dunn, Mikala Dwyer, Dan Flavin, Elizabeth Gower, Gail Hastings, Dale Hickey, Robert Hunter, Robert Jacks, Tim Johnson, Donald Judd, Peter Kennedy, Geoff Kleem, Nigel Lendon, Sol LeWitt, Robert Macpherson, Anne-Marie May, Robert Morris, Bruce, Nauman, John Nixon, Wendy Paramor, Mike Parr, Paul Partos, John Peart, Kerrie Poliness, Mel Ramadan,Giles Ryder, Simone Slee, Tony Smith, Guy Stuart, Kathy Temin, Peter Tyndall, Trevor Vickers, Daniel Von Sturmer, Michael Young
List of Works: by Gail Hastings
ABC art: red cube
Withdrawal:

Catalogue received 22 August.
Subsequent withdrawal by 01 September.
Bibliography: Sue Cramer, ‘Notes on Contemporary Post-Minimalism (part III): The Viewer’, in Sue Cramer (ed.), Less is More: Minimal and Post-Minimal Art in Australia, exhibition catalogue, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne 2012, pp.67–9. Andrew McNamara, ‘Gail Hastings’, in Sue Cramer (ed.), Less is More: Minimal and Post-Minimal Art in Australia, exhibition catalogue, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne 2012, pp.90–1.
Heidi Museum of Modern Art

Dir: Jason Smith

7 Templestowe Road
Bulleen VIC 3105
Australia
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