A different example of such temporal-spatial puzzles is found in Room for love 1990, which contains a conversational or ‘tête-à-tête’ chair, an S-shaped two-seater sofa, sometimes called a ‘love chair’. In such a chair, two people sit in close proximity facing in opposite directions, although they can also converse face-to-face. For Hastings, the analogy alludes to the often-fraught dynamics of social interaction as well as to the reception of art: ‘the chair was intended as a conversation with oneself when one looks at a work of art – where two opposing views are struck – literally –while there is also this third, reconciliatory view of turning halfway toward the oppositeview’.1
The analogy is highly suggestive. For instance, this piece of writing aims to explicate the work for a reader who may have already experienced it, but like the ‘tête-à-tête’ chair it aims to turn the viewer around again to face the work, although differently. It may even extend the understanding of the work beyond conceptions ordinarily entertained by the artist. The analogy also recalls the puzzled status of art in the wake of post-minimalist art, which prompts questions such as: what is the ordinary, quotidian object and what is the artwork? What does it do? As the art historian Thierry de Duve notes of the minimalists, ‘far from freeing themselves “from the increasing ascetic geometry of pure painting”, the minimalists claimed it and projected it into real space’.2 This is what Hastings does, except that she stage-manages this extended state of puzzlement over the status of art.
1. Gail Hastings, private communication with author.
2. Thierry de Duve, Kant after Duchamp, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1996, p 218.
Andrew McNamara, MAKING SPACE FOR THE INVISIBLE ARCHITECTURE OF THE SOCIAL, 2007
Exhibition | |
Date: | 22/Sep/1996 to 22/Sep/1996 |
At: | Centenary Pools, Brisbane |
Artists: |
Tony Clark, A.D.S. Donaldson, Gail Hastings, Leni Hoffmann, John Nixon, Rose Nolan, Kerrie Poliness, Group Otto |
List of Works: |
by Gail Hastings Room for Love |
Centenary Pools Gregory Terrace |
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