Space Practising Tools
The Art Action of Space’s Self-Sublation
A publication by Gail Hastings, featuring an introduction by Jon Roffe.
Hardcover | 128 Pages | 240 x 170mm
The practise of space as a material entity — Ships from St Kilda, Melbourne.
In Space Practising Tools, space is not a void to be filled, but a substantial form rendered visible through a process of contradiction and sublation. It is a sculptural situation where the work refutes itself to become itself — a movement of thought that allows space to be seen anew after decades of laying stagnant, introduced through Minimal Art then forgotten.
About the book
Traditional sculpture focuses on the material object; Space Practising Tools focuses on the void. Through a double action where the second action turns back to face the first, these tools at first surrender space to immateriality only then to substantiate space as material. By reversing the hierarchy between form and content, the tools allow space to materialise through this movement of thought to differentiate itself from the space of the room.
Hastings incorporates watercolours, photographic documentation and schematic diagrams to invite the reader into the process of practising space.
Space Practising Tools is set in Sylexiad. Designed by Dr Robert Hillier, the typeface accommodates the cognitive movement of reading to align with the book’s exploration of the movement of thought.
In what initially appear to be simple operations, what we discover is a radical fidelity to the substratum of experience, in its full intimacy and strangeness, and an attempt to create works that expose us to the force of its command: be, otherwise. See, otherwise.
— Jon Roffe
To practise space is to make space into a form that does not contain a content, but is its content.
