Bibliography
Crabb Annabel,
Review,
2014,
http://gailhastings.com.au/book/missing/, accessed 23 October 2016.
Excerpt
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.
Parker Philip Isobel,
‘The pure potential of a page’,
The Art Life,
2014,
.
Excerpt
‘Missing’ is a (virtual) object — namely the book itself — but it is also a state of being, or rather a state of being displaced. […] The Missing books that are embedded in each sculptuation — virtualized and synecdochic — trap the viewer within a looped mise-en-abîme. Their presence turns each work into a hall of mirrors.
Rowell Amanda,
‘Afterword’,
Missing: Four Sculptuations by Gail Hasting,
Pigment Publisher,
Sydney
2014,
pp.xiv-xivi.
Shiff Richard,
‘Foreword’,
Missing: Four Sculptuations by Gail Hasting,
Pigment Publisher,
Sydney
2014,
pp.v-vi.
Excerpt
The ‘copy’ exists in two different modes, two different kinds of spaces, two different realms of experience. The copy-as-original can be virtual, like an electronic signal, while the copy-as-edition becomes material, like printouts from a master code. Or, the copy-as-original can be materially based, while its replications exist virtually, like photographic scans, whether disseminated or not. No matter how we figure what a copy is, it extends the scope of our experience. We realise that our consciousness exists somewhere between the virtual and the material; or, more to the point,
it must exist as both. Actual and virtual are equally real, like an object and its image, an event and its dream.
Human events are dreamlike — to use Gail Hastings’ term, our situation is a sculptuation, from which we negotiate a physical world and a conceptual world. The physical world is the sculptural; we can bump against it. The conceptual world is the situational; we imagine or formulate our situation in order to delineate a purpose in life and chart its prospects.
HoldingsGail Hastings’ studio
Corner caretakers is available for acquisition. Please enquire about viewing the artwork.
