Chuffed to have just discovered Associate Professor Martyn Jolly and Associate Professor Robert Nelson’s commendation of Space Practising Tools, 2021, in the AAANZ 2022 Best Artist-led Publication list of prizes.
The two judges write: This artist’s book wittily instantiates the formalist principles it methodically elucidates. It is meticulously complete down to every detail, and the artist’s personal creative style is satisfyingly sustained across 116 pages. The book’s design, referencing modernist manuals, delivers the pleasure of several gentle jokes, such as the afterimage produced when the reader is invited to stare at a black dot on a white page. While being an integral aesthetic object, the book successfully calls in the conceptual references points that had informed Hastings’ practice as an artist.
Thank you Martyn Jolly and Robert Nelson — GH