Judges of the Best Artist Book for the AAANZ Prize, 2017 — Martyn Jolly and Christopher LG Hill — write that this ‘publication pushes the format of Artist book the most, and is engaged with its format. As one of the few projects not heavily engaged with research as a format, it is important. It… Continue reading Best Artist Book – AAANZ Prize 2017
In the August 2014 edition of Art Monthly Australia there is a review of Exhibition: To Do (2014) and Missing: four sculptuations by Gail Hastings (2014), by Judith Blackall. The Library now holds the article, Gail Hastings: Sculptuations.
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Image: Gail Hastings, Exhibition: To Do, 2014, acrylic on plywood, plywood, watercolour and lead pencil on paper, 185.4 x 225 x 225cm (photo: Sofia Freeman)
Exhibition: To Do Closing Launch: Saturday 3 May, 4-6pm with the work’s spatial score performed by clarinetist Megan Clune starting 4:45pm open Wednesday-Saturday, 11am-6pm Gail Hastings’ Exhibition: To Do is a ‘to-do list’ for making art not yet done, a task-at-hand still at-hand, except for the construction of storage shelves that await the art, aligned in the gallery along the Earth’s cardinal axes. The height, width and depth of each of the four storage shelves that comprise Exhibition: To Do have been determined by the thickness of the plywood used (18mm) and the repeatable pattern of spaces this thickness makes. ‘The ubiquitous need to create space for a desired event through a ‘to-do’ list in which a disarray of tasks can be put into productive order’ forms, here, a composition of solid and non-solid intervals that implicate a spatial weft and warp of patience and breath. Clarinetist Megan Clune will perform Exhibition: To Do‘s score of spatial intervals. |
A review of Gail Hastings’ ebook Missing by Isobel Parker Philip entitled The pure potential of a page is published, today, on The Art Life.
Hastings uses the term ‘sculptuation’ to define her practice. This is a term that marries ‘sculpture’ with ‘situation’ so as to shift focus away from the individuated sculptural object and towards the spatial scheme it delineates. […] We dip in and out of the space of the work; interpreting it from afar as distanced observers while simultaneously occupying territory contained within its circumference. Whether consciously or not, we are implicated in the work. We inhabit its topography. Can an e-book be enlisted to perform the same function as these object-based works? Can its screened images — floating inaccessible in the data cloud — coerce the viewer into the same tidal pull as their physical counterparts? […] Why should a virtual book ape the form of a physical book? Surely it can possess its own architecture and pioneer its own pathways. Hastings’ work not only recognizes the possibility of such an architecture, it lays the foundations.
Isobel Parker Philip, The pure potential of a page, 25 April 2014
Missing: four sculptuations by Gail Hastings with a foreword by the art historian Richard Shiff will be released tomorrow on iBooks, Saturday, 26 April 2014.
A review of Exhibition: To Do by Chloé Wolifson can be found on the Arts Hub, Saturday 19 April 2014.
Delicately rendered in watercolour with ruled pencil lines emerging from the edges of the translucent wash, these pieces depict the To Do list in question. One such reminder, the instruction: ‘Build racks in which to store the art after the exhibition’, speaks volumes about the established systems of the art world, and the particular approach artists must take when they create work which sits outside the conventionally commercial.
Cholé Wolifson, 19 April 2014.
Corner caretakers, 2014, one of the four sculptuations in the ebook Missing purchased through iBooks, is also mentioned.
Corner caretakers, 2014, and Space of a five page plot, 2014, are two of four sculptuations that comprise the ebook Missing: four sculptuations by Gail Hastings, 2014 available at iBooks. Both are now on view at The Commercial Gallery, Redfern, along with the sculptuation Exhibition: To Do, 2014.
Images 1-4 Gail Hastings, Exhibition: To Do, 2014, acrylic on plywood, plywood, watercolour and lead pencil on paper, 185.5 x 225 x 225cm; image 5 exhibition installation view; images 6-7 Gail Hastings,Corner caretakers, 2014, watercolour and lead pencil on paper in plywood frames, 12 components, each 55 x 46.5 x 1.8cm (Corner caretakers is a sculptuation from Gail Hastings’ eBook, Missing, 2014)
The four walls that make up Gail Hastings’ Exhibition: To Do are oriented within the gallery along the Earth’s axis — coordinates and a rudimentary geometry shared by all. Each wall bears geometric patterns of shelves — small units of space — made of intervals and intersections described and located along x, y and z axes. The pattern of spatial intervals has been determined by the material thickness of the wood used — 18mm; wherein solidity and space play interchanging parts (e.g. solid, space, space, solid, space, space, solid, space, space, solid …) along the height and length of each object. In these ways, Hastings has eliminated extraneous moments of decision-making, lending a sense of givenness to the exhibition but also its need to be made. […]
Missing: four sculptuations by Gail Hastings, an ebook with a foreword by art historian Richard Shiff, has been included on the National Library of Australia’s online catalogue, Trove.
Missing now available in all of iBooks 51 stores (Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia …)
Missing now available in Australia, Japan and New Zealand through iBooks.
Missing: Four sculptuations by Gail Hastings has just been pre-released on iBooks.
With a foreword by art historian Richard Shiff—widely known for his writing on certain Impressionists while lesser known, yet just as profound, for his writing on the art of Donald Judd—Missing‘s 52 pages include watercolour moments from the Encyclopaedia of Taking Care in Art, Encyclopaedia of Doubt in Art and Encyclopaedia of Looking for the Plot in Art.
Find Missing in iBooks here: Missing – Gail Hastings & Richard Shiff.
Presently working on a book to be published in the next few months. More information soon.