Asides

  • ‘Citational choices’ opens 25 October

    ‘Citational choices’ opens 25 October

    'Citational choices' takes La Trobe University’s Etta Hirsh Ceramics Collection as its point of departure. 'Citational choices' opens 25 October

    from La Trobe Art Institute Instagram account @latrobe_ai

    ‘Citational choices’ opens 25 October
    ‘Citational choices’ takes La Trobe University’s Etta Hirsh Ceramics Collection as its point of departure. The exhibition unravels the biographical stories present within the collection itself — those of Etta Hirsh, of a local art scene, of La Trobe Art Institute and now, in the case of this exhibition, everyone newly involved.

    Please join us for the opening celebration and a conversation led by curator Isabelle Sully on Friday 28 October at 5 pm.

    Artists: 
    Anna Daučíková #AnnaDaučíková
    Luke Fowler @lukefowler78 
    Gail Hastings @gailhastingsvisualartist 
    Rita Keegan @keeganrita 
    With pieces from the Etta Hirsh Ceramics Collection #ettahirshceramicscollection 
    Exhibition design: Maud Vervenne @maudvervenne 

    Curator: Isabelle Sully @isabellesully 

    Image: Milton Moon, ‘Conical form’, 1997; stoneware, glaze, brushwork decoration, 10 x 12.5 x 40 cm. La Trobe University, Etta Hirsh Ceramics Collection. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Anouk and Vaughan Hulme in memory of Etta Hirsh. Courtesy the estate of Milton Moon. Photo: Christopher Sanders

  • Brunelleschi’s Demonstration of Space

    The Call for Papers is open from June 3 to July 29. 

    If you would like to speak at the 2022 AAANZ Conference, you can now apply to join one of the panels detailed at https://aaanz.info

    To apply, read the instructions, and then submit your Paper Proposal Form to the relevant Panel Convenor.

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    At this years AAANZ conference I am convening the panel ’Brunelleschi’s Demonstration of Space’. In hope you’ll propose a paper as part of the panel, the panel’s description is as follows:

    – – – – – – – – – –

    In Florence in the early fifteenth century, Filippo Brunelleschi demonstrated single-point perspective with a picture panel and mirror while he stood in the central portal of Santa Maria del Fiore. Painters adopted the demonstration’s technical ramifications, and the Church celebrated their more life-like paintings. Yet the demonstration’s philosophical and scientific ramifications promulgated by Nicholas of Cusa led Giordano Bruno to be burned at the stake. It presented questions on the nature of space that contradicted an Aristotelian Universe with anisotropic matter-filled places, not isotropic space. Much, nevertheless, remains contested. Not only Brunelleschi’s method but also perspective’s replacement of a theocentric viewpoint with a subjective or anthropocentric point of view in today’s ‘posthuman’ world. 

    The panel welcomes 20-minute papers that explore the history of perspective and the ensuing nature of space in contemporary art. 

    This includes, for instance, its first art historical treatment by Erwin Panofsky in his essay ’Perspective as Symbolic Form’. Here, perspective’s ‘reality’ accords with a Kantian dichotomy in which space is an empty ‘form’ of thought separate from any content of the world outside. Yet, in 1960s New York, artists contested ’a priori space’ with the art of the real. Were they unrealistic to do so?

  • The Missing Space Project released on iBooks

    The Missing Space Project: Six Interviews was released today on iBooks.

    Most regard phenomenological space made popular in the 1960s as the only type of space introduced by Minimal art. Few are aware of an alternate self-determined space made by the art, itself, that is a concrete, material space. An account of this space is missing.

    The six interviews of The Missing Space Project debate the cause of this oversight.

    To describe what one sees is fundamental to being aware of what one sees. Without a vocabulary with which to describe material space one, effectively, cannot see it.

    The Missing Space Project explores the potential development of a vocabulary with which to describe the differentiated space of art since its emergence in the early 1960s.

    Interviews are with: Marianne Stockebrand, Egidio Marzona, Daniel Marzona, Gregor Stemmrich, Richard Shiff and Renate Wiehager.

    The Missing Space Project: Six Interviews is available today through iBooks at $4.99 (AUD).

     

  • A Few Pieces: Taubert Contemporary, Berlin

    Replica of an original space: yellow green and Replica of an original space: blue light are two wall sculptuations in the group exhibition ‘A Few Pieces’ at Taubert Contemporary in Berlin. Work by artists in the exhibition include: Lars Arrhenius, Geissler & Sann, Gail Hastings, Markus Linnenbrink, Mutter & Genth, Jan van der Ploeg, Markus Weggenmann, Beat Zoderer. The exhibition dates are 17/01/2015 to 07/03/2015. Taubert Contemporary is located at Lindenstraße 35, D – 10969 Berlin.

  • Berlin/New York

    Gail Hastings travels to Berlin and New York to participate in a group exhibition at Taubert Contemporary and to interview participants for a project supported by an Australia Council Grant.

  • Taking It All Away: MCA Collection

    To make a work of timeless art, 1996, is in the MCA collection exhibition ‘Taking It All Away‘ curated by Natasha Bullock. ‘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.‘ The exhibition dates are 18/12/2014 to 22/02/2015.

  • Review of Exhibition: To Do in Art Monthly

    Review of Exhibition: To Do in Art Monthly

    In the August 2014 edition of Art Monthly Australia there is a review of Exhibition: To Do (2014) and Missing: four sculptuations by Gail Hastings (2014), by Judith Blackall. The Library now holds the article,  Gail Hastings: Sculptuations.

  • Announcement: Gail Hastings’ Exhibition: To Do performed as a score | at The Commercial | Saturday 4-6pm

    Announcement: Gail Hastings’ Exhibition: To Do performed as a score | at The Commercial | Saturday 4-6pm

    Image: Gail Hastings, Exhibition: To Do, 2014, acrylic on plywood, plywood, watercolour and lead pencil on paper, 185.4 x 225 x 225cm (photo: Sofia Freeman)

    Exhibition: To Do

    Closing Launch: Saturday 3 May, 4-6pm

    with the work’s spatial score performed by clarinetist

    Megan Clune

    starting 4:45pm

    open Wednesday-Saturday, 11am-6pm
    148 Abercrombie Street, Redfern, NSW, Australia, +61 2 8096 3292

    Gail Hastings’ Exhibition: To Do is a ‘to-do list’ for making art not yet done, a task-at-hand still at-hand, except for the construction of storage shelves that await the art, aligned in the gallery along the Earth’s cardinal axes.

    The height, width and depth of each of the four storage shelves that comprise Exhibition: To Do have been determined by the thickness of the plywood used (18mm) and the repeatable pattern of spaces this thickness makes.  ‘The ubiquitous need to create space for a desired event through a ‘to-do’ list in which a disarray of tasks can be put into productive order’ forms, here, a composition of solid and non-solid intervals that implicate a spatial weft and warp of patience and breath.

    Clarinetist Megan Clune will perform Exhibition: To Do‘s score of spatial intervals. (more…)
  • Review of Missing by Isobel Philip in The Art Life: The pure potential of a page

    Review of Missing by Isobel Philip in The Art Life: The pure potential of a page

    A review of Gail Hastings’ ebook Missing by Isobel Parker Philip entitled The pure potential of a page is published, today, on The Art Life.

    Hastings uses the term ‘sculptuation’ to define her practice. This is a term that marries ‘sculpture’ with ‘situation’ so as to shift focus away from the individuated sculptural object and towards the spatial scheme it delineates. […] We dip in and out of the space of the work; interpreting it from afar as distanced observers while simultaneously occupying territory contained within its circumference. Whether consciously or not, we are implicated in the work. We inhabit its topography. Can an e-book be enlisted to perform the same function as these object-based works? Can its screened images — floating inaccessible in the data cloud — coerce the viewer into the same tidal pull as their physical counterparts? […] Why should a virtual book ape the form of a physical book? Surely it can possess its own architecture and pioneer its own pathways. Hastings’ work not only recognizes the possibility of such an architecture, it lays the foundations.

    Isobel Parker Philip, The pure potential of a page, 25 April 2014

    Missing: four sculptuations by Gail Hastings with a foreword by the art historian Richard Shiff will be released tomorrow on iBooks, Saturday, 26 April 2014.

     

  • Review of ‘Exhibition: To Do’ by Chloé Wolifson

    Review of ‘Exhibition: To Do’ by Chloé Wolifson

    A review of Exhibition: To Do by Chloé Wolifson can be found on the Arts Hub, Saturday 19 April 2014.

    Delicately rendered in watercolour with ruled pencil lines emerging from the edges of the translucent wash, these pieces depict the To Do list in question. One such reminder, the instruction: ‘Build racks in which to store the art after the exhibition’, speaks volumes about the established systems of the art world, and the particular approach artists must take when they create work which sits outside the conventionally commercial.

    Cholé Wolifson, 19 April 2014.

    Corner caretakers, 2014, one of the four sculptuations in the ebook Missing purchased through iBooks, is also mentioned.

  • ‘Corner caretakers’ and ‘Space of a five page plot’ now on view at The Commercial

    ‘Corner caretakers’ and ‘Space of a five page plot’ now on view at The Commercial

    Corner caretakers, 2014, and Space of a five page plot, 2014, are two of four sculptuations that comprise the ebook Missing: four sculptuations by Gail Hastings, 2014 available at iBooks. Both are now on view at The Commercial Gallery, Redfern, along with the sculptuation Exhibition: To Do, 2014.

  • Announcement: Exhibition: To Do

    Announcement: Exhibition: To Do

    The Commercial

    Images 1-4 Gail Hastings, Exhibition: To Do, 2014, acrylic on plywood, plywood, watercolour and lead pencil on paper, 185.5 x 225 x 225cm; image 5 exhibition installation view; images 6-7 Gail Hastings,Corner caretakers, 2014, watercolour and lead pencil on paper in plywood frames, 12 components, each 55 x 46.5 x 1.8cm (Corner caretakers is a sculptuation from Gail Hastings’ eBook, Missing, 2014)

    The four walls that make up Gail Hastings’ Exhibition: To Do are oriented within the gallery along the Earth’s axis — coordinates and a rudimentary geometry shared by all. Each wall bears geometric patterns of shelves — small units of space — made of intervals and intersections described and located along x, y and z axes. The pattern of spatial intervals has been determined by the material thickness of the wood used — 18mm; wherein solidity and space play interchanging parts (e.g. solid, space, space, solid, space, space, solid, space, space, solid …) along the height and length of each object. In these ways, Hastings has eliminated extraneous moments of decision-making, lending a sense of givenness to the exhibition but also its need to be made. […]

    (more…)

  • Exhibition: To Do

    Exhibition: To Do

    Gail Hastings’ forthcoming exhibition is entitled Exhibition: To Do and will open at The Commercial on Friday, 11 April 2014, 6-8pm.

    An excerpt from the exhibition record reads:

    Space is generally thought of in its ideal form — as empty. Notions, such as needing space to breath, space to move, space to be free and outer space (uninhabited) point this way. In being empty, space is thought of as missing something, something that can fill it. It is why space is spoken of with such potential.

    The conundrum, then, is how does one retain this potential when one makes art that creates space — an aesthetic space that is not missing something but is, instead, a something: a concrete thing?

    Some time ago I was in a cafe in Melbourne, in St Kilda, enjoying a cup of coffee when I could not help but overhear two conversations on art taking place on either side of me. . .

  • Sculptuation by Gail Hastings in 20/200 at Sarah Cottier Gallery opening next Thursday, 13 March

    Sculptuation by Gail Hastings in 20/200 at Sarah Cottier Gallery opening next Thursday, 13 March

    20/200 is  group exhibition at Sarah Cottier Gallery that marks 20 years and over 200 exhibitions for the gallery. Gail Hastings is delighted to contribute a sculptuation to the exhibition for having participated in the 1996 exhibition ‘Road to Love’ (20.03.1996–30.03.1996) curated by Mikala Dwyer. The gallery, then, was located at 36 Lennox Street, Newtown, Sydney. The two sculptuations by Gail Hastings included in the 1996 exhibition were untitled 1995 (four pages from the Encyclopaedia of Words), 1995 (private collection, Brisbane) and To make a work of forgetful art, 1996 (private collection, Brisbane). More on 20/200 can be found in the 20/200 exhibition record and the Sarah Cottier Gallery website. (photo: habit’s pattern: orange and black, 2010)

     

  • Press release | The Commercial: Missing

    The Commercial

    Gail Hastings

    Missing

    an eBook comprising four new sculptuations by Gail Hastings

    Foreword by Richard Shiff

    pre-release now available on iBooks

    Download on iBooks

    (more…)

  • Missing pre-release available now on iBooks

    Missing pre-release available now on iBooks

    Missing: Four sculptuations by Gail Hastings has just been pre-released on iBooks.

    With a foreword by art historian Richard Shiff—widely known for his writing on certain Impressionists while lesser known, yet just as profound, for his writing on the art of Donald Judd—Missing‘s 52 pages include watercolour moments from the Encyclopaedia of Taking Care in Art, Encyclopaedia of Doubt in Art and Encyclopaedia of Looking for the Plot in Art. 

    Find Missing in iBooks here: Missing – Gail Hastings & Richard Shiff.

  • Becky Sparks and James Roland—’Art frame: red’

    Becky Sparks and James Roland—’Art frame: red’

    ‘Art frame: red’, 2011, by Gail Hastings will be on view in James Roland and Becky Spark’s contribution to Art Month’s Collectors’ Space..

    Art Month Presents Collector’s Space

    A hidden urban space filled with museum quality artworks never seen together in public before… or ever again.

    Curated by Natalia Bradshaw, the Collector’s Space is a unique pop up exhibition which explores personal collecting journeys. Experience highlights from significant and diverse private art collections, free and open to everyone in March. …

    The 2014 Collectors:

    James Roland and Becky Sparks are a dynamic young couple with a unique collecting vision – they are committed to collecting the art of their contemporaries. Becky and James started actively collecting and supporting contemporary art in 2006. Since that time, they have amassed a significant collection of works, mostly Australian, with a deliberate focus on artists of their generation and younger emerging artists.

     

  • Artists Talk at The Commercial

    Artists Talk at The Commercial

    At 4pm, 07/02/014 I will be at The Commercial gallery to speak with people as they look at sides: red versus blue, 2009, currently on view in the group exhibition OUI we at The Commercial. GH

    From the press release:

    Gail Hastings will speak about her exhibited work, the sculptuation ‘sides: red versus blue’ and the creation of space. Hastings’ work is both subject and object. It expounds itself. At the same time as being itself, it explains itself. Within this spatial circuit a viewer finds themselves where, perhaps, they least expect to be.

  • Upcoming exhibition: Direct Democracy

    Happy to announce that space holder for a yellow, white and red space will be in the upcoming exhibition at MUMA—Direct Democracy—opening 26/04/2013 https://gailhastings.au/event/direct-democracy/ …

Gail Hastings