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 |
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