Space Practising Tools: Reclaiming the Invisible through Sculpture and Thought’s Movement

Meet the fascinating intersection of sculpture and continental philosophy in Gail Hastings’ Space Practising Tools. Reminiscent of earlier efforts in Minimal Art, these tools flip the traditional script of sculpture: rather than the object being the hero and space being the void, the space itself dictates the form.

The Art Action: A Reversal in Hierarchy

In traditional sculpture, we tend to focus on the material object — the wood, the stone, the bronze. Hastings reverses this hierarchy. By using a block of space to determine the measurements of its wood housing, she asks us to regain our enchantment with what is usually invisible.

We ignore space as a defence mechanism against fear of the unknown or the vast. Through contradiction, a space practising tool comes to terms with this fear. Everyday space (functional, ignored) becomes tridimensional sculptural space (active, observed — and enjoyed).

Precedent: From Colour to Space

Hastings turns to Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color (1963) as a pedagogical precedent. Instead of colour, however, Hastings explores the way habitual perception robs us of seeing the art action of sculptural space. For unlike colour, space must engage a process of contradiction inherent in thought and language to materialise. Otherwise, it remains invisible.

A Philosophical Perspective

Jon Roffe — a preeminent scholar of continental philosophy — provides the introduction, tracing the book’s movement of thought on space. He explores Hastings’ tools not as processes of knowledge, but as a radical fidelity to the substratum of experience: an invitation to see, and be, otherwise.

NB: Each copy is hand-wrapped and shipped in reinforced packaging to ensure it arrives in studio condition.