A REVIEW
by Annabel Crabb
When Charles Saatchi’s gallery opened in South Bank, with its notorious list of headliners (chunks of frozen human blood, sump oil lagoons and rooms full of chopped-up cattle), one small corner was devoted to a collection of newspaper cartoons lampooning the works.
My favourite was one in which an Eskimo, gazing at Damien Hirst’s pickled tiger shark, turned to a fellow visitor with the remark: “My five-year-old son could’ve done that.”
Interaction with art can be an occasion for hilariously multi-directional anxiety. The artist, observing someone observing her work, feels an unbearable cocktail of solicitude and vulnerability. The observer, knowing she is observed, frets that she’s missing something.
Is loud art — sledgehammer art — trying to abolish this moment of tender confusion? A message delivered by means of a decomposing rattlesnake chained to a chocolate wheel may still prove confounding to some viewers, but at least there’s something to talk about in the interim. No awkwardness need ensue, when the spectacle itself fills the silence.
Quiet art, like the work of Gail Hastings, chooses instead to inhabit that moment and furnish it with humour.
Am I missing something? — the timeless fretful self-interrogation of the enthusiastic but apprehensive gallery-creeper — becomes, in Missing, the shape of the artwork itself.
It’s funny, because everyone recognizes this tendency in the civilian art-lover; this scrupulous and obedient hunt for scraps of meaning hidden here and there by the artist, failure to spot any of which might constitute a serious inadequacy.
It’s courageous, because of all the compulsions that I imagine might grip an artist in the act of creation, the temptation to spell it out must surely be one of the hardest to resist.
And it’s generous, because the greatest expression of faith and trust an artist can possibly articulate in the unknown person who will — somewhere down the track — pause in front of her work is to invite them in to it. To allow them the run of the place. To give them the thrill of being in on the joke.
Gail Hastings’ work achieves quite a remarkable state of grace. Taut control in design and execution, coupled with an exhilarating and generous capacity to turn things over, at exactly the right time, to the viewer.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Book Release | |
Date: | 26/Apr/2014 |
At: | Apple Books, Available in 51 countries |
List of Works: |
by Gail Hastings Corner caretakers Space of a five page plot Missing The distance of doubt |
Description: |
Missing is a collection of four sculptuations by Gail Hastings presented as an ebook, with a foreword by art historian Richard Shiff who discusses the being (or non-being) of Missing. Available through Apple Books ($16.99 AUD) |
Bibliography: | Judith Blackall, ‘Gail Hastings: Sculptuations’, in Michael Fitzgerald (ed.), Art Monthly Australia, issue 272, 2014, pp.40–3. Annabel Crabb, Review, 2014, http://gailhastings.com.au/book/missing/, accessed 23 October 2016. Isobel Parker Philip, ‘The pure potential of a page’, The Art Life, 2014, http://theartlife.com.au/2014/the-pure-potential-of-a-page/. Amanda Rowell, ‘Afterword’, Missing: Four Sculptuations by Gail Hasting, Pigment Publisher, Sydney 2014, pp.xiv-xivi. Richard Shiff, ‘Foreword’, Missing: Four Sculptuations by Gail Hasting, Pigment Publisher, Sydney 2014, pp.v-vi. Chloé Wolifson, ‘Gail Hastings – Exhibition: To Do’, in Deborah Stone (ed.), Visual Arts Hub: Reviews, 2014, http://visual.artshub.com.au/news-article/reviews/visual-arts/exhibition-to-do-243240, accessed 23 September 2016. |
Image: |
image: First page from the sculptuation ‘Missing’ (two components) with text added for ebook cover. |
Apple Books Best viewed on an iPad or a Mac computer |
Gail Hastings Installation 1989 / Fergus Armstrong Photograph 1989, Store 5, Melbourne
Suzannah Barta, Sandra Bridie, Lyndell Brown, Gail Hastings, Store 5, Melbourne
This Performance — A Passing Thought, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne
S.W.I.M. Fund Raiser, Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, Melbourne
Melinda Harper, Gail Hastings, Gary Wilson, Constanze Zikos, FirstDraft Gallery, Sydney
Some examples of different ways, Store 5, Melbourne
No, just an empty square, Store 5, Melbourne
Production, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
Australian Perspecta 1991, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Gail Hastings & Elizabeth Newman, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
Lovers, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne
To make a work of timeless art, Artspace, Sydney
Road to Love, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney
out of time: part two, David Pestorius Gallery, Brisbane
Art 1996 Chicago, David Pestorius Gallery, Chicago
Reservoir, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, Lake Macquarie
The Pool, Centenary Pools, Brisbane
To make a work of timeless art, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide
To make a work of timeless art, David Pestorius Gallery, Brisbane
Wall as Medium?, David Pestorius Gallery, Brisbane
four coincidences, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
Duality: a series of weekly exhibitions during April 1997, David Pestorius Gallery, Brisbane
Art 1997 Chicago, David Pestorius Gallery, Chicago
two corners and a cube, Galerie Köstring/Maier, München
On Dialogue, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin
two and three stares, Galerie Mark Müller, Zurich
Statements Art 28‘97 Basel, David Pestorius Gallery, Basel
forgotten encyclopaedias, 24 Church Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
Art Forum Berlin 1997, David Pestorius Gallery, Berlin
To complete a work of contemporary art, Ausstellungsraum Thomas Taubert, Düsseldorf
art idea no. 8,582,048, Bahnwärterhaus, Esslingen
Close Quarters: Contemporary Art from Australia and New Zealand, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
art idea no. 8,582,048, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
projections, David Pestorius Gallery, Berlin
apparently not, David Pestorius Gallery, Berlin
I views, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra
Close Quarters: Contemporary Art from Australia and New Zealand, ANU School of Art Gallery, Canberra
The Space Here Is Everywhere: Art with Architecture, Villa Merkel/Bahwärterhaus, Esslingen
Space Affects: the art and architecture of James Birrell and Gail Hastings, Metro Arts, Brisbane
Open House, Pestorius Sweeney House, Brisbane
OUI we, The Commercial, Sydney
20/20, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney
Exhibition: To Do, The Commercial, Sydney
Missing: four sculptuations by Gail Hastings, Apple Books, Available in 51 countries
Melbourne Art Fair, The Commercial, Melbourne
Taking it all away: MCA collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney