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 |
14 July 1989 Gail Hastings Installation 1989 / Fergus Armstrong Photograph 1989, Store 5, Melbourne
12 August 1989 Suzannah Barta, Sandra Bridie, Lyndell Brown, Gail Hastings, Store 5, Melbourne
11 November 1989 A3 20, Store 5, Melbourne
30 November 1989 This Performance — A Passing Thought, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne
1 December 1989 S.W.I.M. Fund Raiser, Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, Melbourne
1 March 1991 Exsultate, Jubilate, Store 5, Melbourne
21 April 1990 Room for Love, Store 5, Melbourne
18 August 1990 Uses of Chaos, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne
20 September 1990 4th Australian Sculpture Triennial Forum, Melbourne Lower Town Hall, Melbourne
9 October 1990 Dis-location, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne
13 October 1990 Drawings, Store 5, Melbourne
14 November 1990 Floor Plan: Empty, except, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne
6 April 1991 Some examples of different ways, Store 5, Melbourne
27 April 1991 No, just an empty square, Store 5, Melbourne
1 August 1991 Production, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
7 August 1991 Australian Perspecta 1991, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
11 December 1991 Gail Hastings & Elizabeth Newman, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
5 December 1995 Lovers, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne
7 March 1996 To make a work of timeless art, Artspace, Sydney
20 March 1996 Road to Love, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney
20 April 1996 out of time: part two, David Pestorius Gallery, Brisbane
9 May 1996 Art 1996 Chicago, David Pestorius Gallery, Chicago
24 August 1996 Reservoir, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, Lake Macquarie
22 September 1996 The Pool, Centenary Pools, Brisbane
3 October 1996 To make a work of timeless art, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide
30 November 1996 To make a work of timeless art, David Pestorius Gallery, Brisbane
7 March 1997 Wall as Medium?, David Pestorius Gallery, Brisbane
4 April 1997 four coincidences, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
8 May 1997 Art 1997 Chicago, David Pestorius Gallery, Chicago
23 May 1997 two corners and a cube, Galerie Köstring/Maier, München
30 May 1997 On Dialogue, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin
7 June 1997 two and three stares, Galerie Mark Müller, Zurich
11 June 1997 Statements Art 28‘97 Basel, David Pestorius Gallery, Basel
2 August 1997 forgotten encyclopaedias, 24 Church Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
1 September 1997 Art Forum Berlin 1997, David Pestorius Gallery, Berlin
6 December 1998 art idea no. 8,582,048, Bahnwärterhaus, Esslingen
5 March 1999 art idea no. 8,582,048, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
21 April 1999 projections, David Pestorius Gallery, Berlin
30 April 1999 apparently not, David Pestorius Gallery, Berlin
12 June 1999 I views, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra
10 September 1999 Open House, Pestorius Sweeney House, Brisbane
11 September 1999 Sorry, we are closed, UQ Art Museum, Brisbane
25 January 2003 sculptural situation: plans, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne
4 April 2003 In Conversation, UQ Art Museum, Brisbane
6 June 2003 Hothouse: The flower in contemporary art, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne
3 September 2003 Private/Corporate II, Daimler Contemporary, Berlin
7 November 2003 But is it art?, The Cross Art Projects, Sydney