Event Type: Group
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Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize
The 2018 Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize was today awarded to Melbourne-based artist Gail Hastings and Sydney-based emerging artist Adrian McDonald. Celebrating its 22nd year, the Prize is among Australia’s best-known art awards, spanning all mediums and offering a total of $36,000 in prize money. Hastings was awarded the established artist category ($25,000) for colour circle: four colour scheme for a room (2018) and McDonald was awarded the emerging artist category ($10,000) for Approximating a Circle (2018).
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9 X 5 NOW Exhibition: ART150
9 X 5 NOW, at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne, 16–25 June, showcases generations of practicing artists who have studied or taught at the National Gallery School or VCA Art. The most experienced artist represented attended the National Gallery School in the 1940s, and the youngest completed studies at the Victorian College of the Arts just one year ago.
The exhibition title and concept references the famous 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition held at the Buxton Rooms, Swanston Street Melbourne in 1889. All seven artists in that exhibition, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin, Charles Conder, C. Douglas Richardson, R.E. Falls and Herbert Daly, were National Gallery School alumni. McCubbin was also a staff member and Louis Abrahams, also a former student, supplied the 9 x 5 inch cedar cigar box lids on which the works were painted.
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Taking it all away: MCA collection
Exhibition curatorial
Natasha Bullock
Taking it all away [is] an exhibition of works drawn from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.
Diverse in form and character, the works in Taking it all away set the dynamics of space and time against the complexities of modern existence. Together, these works speak to the importance of art history and to the vigorous, evolving nature of contemporary art.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia dedicates this exhibition to the memory of artists Gordon Bennett and Robert Hunter, who sadly passed away during its development.
Natasha Bullock, curator, 2015
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JANIS II
Janis encompasses a range of activities initiated by Kelly Doley (a member of Brown Council) focusing on female artists, writers and thinkers allowing them “to be heard a little louder, to take up more space and more time in the world” (website). She has teamed up with Amanda Rowell to curate the second Janis exhibition spanning two Sydney inner city galleries, The Commercial and MCLEMOI. Janis II features abstract, conceptual and minimalist work by Bonita Bub, Jenny Christmann, Sarah Goffman, Gail Hastings and Sarah Rodigari (who will be performing at the opening, 26 July). A publication featuring short pieces by an impressive list of female artists and thinkers will also accompany the exhibition. (For the amusing significance of the Lee Bontecou image read Gail Hastings’ insightful essay Thank goodness Donald Judd wasn’t a misogynist.)
by Virginia Baxter and Keith Gallasch, ‘In the loop July 24: quick picks‘, Realtime, issue 115, Sydney, June-July 2013.
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Direct Democracy
Exhibition curatorial
by Geraldine Barlow
As Individuals we are capable, but so much more so when we act together. The collective body is a complex mechanism: a layering of systems, societies, generations, inheritances and innovations. Groups of human beings have developed numerous models to identify with each other, work together, build societies and exercise power. Democracy is just one of these; with a long history of development. […] How can we actively revitalise, rebuild and own this collective body? What is the place of democracy in the process and what opportunities are there for the development of existing and jew democratic mechanisms?
Direct Democracy explores these questions through the work of nineteen contemporary artists and artist collectives. […]
Gail Hastings offers an abstracted map of the ayes (yellow), the nos (in red) and a space in between in white, in her 2012 work Space holder for a yellow, white and red space. What is the purpose of this space in between? Hastings maps out a sculptural volume for each side of the proposition […] As Hastings’ work states, ‘Until such time as the debate is resumed, the before-mentioned space will remain on hold’.
Excerpt from Geraldine Barlow, ‘Direct Democracy’, in Geraldine Barlow (ed.), exhibition catalogue, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne 2013, p. 91, 98-98.
A review
by Suzanne Fraser
The modern development of a “good form of government”, as articulated by John Stuart Mill in the sixteenth century, finds contemporary articulation in an infinitely fascinating sculpture by Gail Hastings entitled Space holder for a yellow, white and red space (2012). Here the mechanisms of voting, competition, representation, and bureaucracy are lent an elegant and quietly humorous disposition that contorts the understanding of the viewer through ambiguity and metanarrative.
Excerpt from Suzanne Fraser, web review, Melbourne, 28/05/2013.
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![Less is More: Minimal and Post-Minimal Art in Australia [withdrawal]](https://gailhastings.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Less-is-More-page-91.jpg)
Less is More: Minimal and Post-Minimal Art in Australia [withdrawal]
01/09/2012 withdrawal of ABC art: red cube from the exhibition upon receiving the exhibition’s catalogue and reading the curatorial premise for the work’s inclusion, where I gave reasons for the withdrawal that include:
[The curatorial essay mentions] my art (with reference to Floor plan: Empty, except) within the context of Robert Morris’ essay. Not only is this misrepresentative of the place from which my art stems, but I hadn’t even read his notes on Sculpture at that time! Not until some years later.
The text in my art is not narrative. It does not tell a story about Jack and Jill running over a hill that exists externally to the sculptuation it is in. If it were narrative, it would not read the way it does, often stilted, chopped, awkward, blocky, non eventful, monotonous, etc. […] The text is not a bad nor a good story — it’s not a story at all. It functions as a spatial aspect of the sculptuation, that’s all. So people walk away disappointed with my art, with the conclusion I’m a bad writer. But the text has nothing to do with being a writer.
Gail Hastings, excerpts from email to the curator, 31 August 2012
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![Notes towards contemporary post-minimalism [withdrawal]](https://gailhastings.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/NOTES-TOWARDS-CONTEMPORARY-POST-MINIMALISM.png)
Notes towards contemporary post-minimalism [withdrawal]
Several ideas stemming from Minimalism, though controversial in the 1960s, are now widely accepted as part of the landscape of contemporary art: for example, the artwork can be fabricated by someone other than the artist; it can comprise modules or units used singularly or repeated, and its governing concept is more important than any craft or technical skills. Minimal artists dispensed with plinths, frames and other distancing devices, thereby activating real space with their works and more directly addressing the viewer. Heide curator Sue Cramer talks with artists Janet Burchill, Gail Hastings, John Nixon and Kathy Temin about the reworking of Minimalism within contemporary art today. The evening will begin with a film viewing, wine and cheese.
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Minimalism And Applied II: Dialogues of contemporary art with aspects of 20th century design and architecture
photos:
(upper) Gail Hastings, Charlotte Perriand/Jean Prouvé
(lower) Gail Hastings, Charlotte Perriand
Mercedes-Benz Art Collection -
Taint
Taint observed the continued currency of minimalism through the work of six contemporary Australian artists. Formal and conceptual links can be made between their work and the Minimal project of the 1960s; their art is spare with an emphasis on geometric form, their works articulate space and in doing so acknowledge the audience and their role in creating meaning. These tendencies are shared with Minimalism, and yet these works are ever conscious of the archive.
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Art from a Hundred Years 1909–2009: Highlights of the Daimler Art Collection
The third presentation of the Daimler Art Collection in South Germany (following the extensive survey at ZKM Karlsruhe 2003 and at the Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen 2004) at Museum Prediger Schwäbisch Gmünd concentrates on Highlights from the Collection with around 100 works spanning nearly 10 decades – from Adolf Hölzel, the main teacher in the area of South West German classical movements, through to young New York sculptor Vincent Szarek; from classical Modernism through to international contemporary art; from painting and drawing via photography to Installation and Video Art. [… ] Contemporary international art is represented in our exhibition with famous names as well as with young upcoming artists. Their work most often can be read as a continuation of abstract-minimal positions. Artists forming part of Classical Modernism and the avant-gardes of the 1960s/70s—like Josef Albers, Daniel Buren, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, Richard Artschwager or Robert Ryman—are positioned beside leading contemporary artists as John M Armleder, Sylvie Fleury, Gail Hastings, Kirsten Mosher, Simone Westerwinter or Andrea Zittel.
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Faith and Lust: Various Approaches to Formalist Abstraction
Faith and Lust: Various Approaches to Formalist Abstraction takes as a departure point Bruce Nauman’s Vices and Virtues of 1988, which features ‘Faith and Lust’ in neon light, wrapped around a major building at the University of California in San Diego. The exhibition will explore the psychological implications of various modes of production in formalist art.
The exhibition brings together artists from the early years of Australian hard-edged abstraction (Sydney Ball & Tony McGillick) with contemporary artists from Europe (Frank Altmann, Christoph Bruckner & Guido Münch) as well as mid career and emerging artists from Australia who are influenced by and engaged with the legacy of formalist abstraction.
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To make a work of timeless art: MCA Primavera Acquisitions
The decision to acquire the work of Primavera artists began in 1993, the first purchase being a suite of works by Gail Hastings, an artist included in the inaugural Primavera exhibition.
Everyone wants to be close to ‘the wheel of history’, to be remembered, to occupy a place within the wider schema of recent art history; and yet, it is only with the benefit of hindsight that the relative importance of an artist’s work can be determined. The exhibition aims to reflect this tendency by taking its title from one of Gail Hastings’ ‘sculptural situations’ being exhibited here for the first time.
Isabel Finch and Clare Lewis, ‘To make a work of timeless art’, in To make a work of timeless art: MCA Primavera Acquisitions, exhibition catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 2008, p.2.
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Store 5 is … ?
Other artist initiatives before Store 5 ostensibly grew from radical 1970s and early 1980s activism, where artists collaborated to stand for their rights (e.g. artists’ fees) and, thereby, contemporary art. Pre-ordained definitions of art were questioned as well as the politics of inclusion and exclusion in public programs (e.g. the exclusion of women artists). By so doing, these artists furnished a better art world that many of us younger artists lazily lounged in a little, perhaps, too unthankfully.
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Kunst Nach Kunst / Art After Art
Simple geometric patterns with a coloration [of] clearly defined contours characterize Gail Hastings’ work. The proximity to Minimal Art is unmistakable [as] a conceptual interface of her works. … The title, “To complete a work of contemporary art” (1997), already indicates a direct reference to an apparently ‘unfinished’ contemporary art. This reference must be formally seen as playing with geometric arrangements that can be categorised somewhere between those of LeWitt and those of Hastings. The viewer might feel as if he or she were asked to complete the individual parts or fragments, which Minimal Art, for example, has left behind, so as to form a whole.
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October 2001 / Geometrical Affairs
The Daimler Art Collection focuses on geometrical and abstract concepts in 20th century art, and shows how these ideas are developing on the contemporary art scene world-wide.
The Geometrical Affairs exhibition includes selected works spanning six decades, starting with classical pictures by artists like Josef Albers or Adolf Fleischmann and ending up with “Sculptural Situations” by the young Australian artist Gail Hastings. It also juxtaposes essentially black-and-white serial painting and object art with pictorial ensembles ablaze with color and vitality. This selection of works shows that conceptual, minimalist and constructive questions can interact in very exciting ways, and that strong ideologies can lose some of their force when faced with an opposite view stated in visual form.
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Open House
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.
