measuring subjectivity

The combination of a circle, square and a connecting/dividing passage take on different configurations in Gail Hastings’ installations: the circle and square may connote rooms in a floor plan, objects in a room, or props on a stage; the passage may refer to a connecting room in a plan, an actual passageway, or a text through which one figuratively travels. On another level, the circle and the square stand in for any number of oppositions, whose shifting relationships are negotiated through our experience of this work, such as subject and object, time and space, signifier and signified. The idea of the passage signals the artist’s attempt to locate a truth or a place between such oppositions. Her work may be characterised in terms of movement, transference, the passage between the arts (drawing, sculpture, theatre, writing), the actors (viewer, artist, object) and between dimensions (two, three and four dimensional). The divide between subject and object is infringed by the union of the viewer and the scene; the divide between time and space by the temporality manifested in the experience of space, the passing of time in a space of passage.