HASTINGS, GAIL (1965 -)

"Primed Canvas (Yellow Brown)" (2002)
mixed media (diptych)
cm
signed
*private collection, Sydney
.
Hastings is a leading Australian Contemporary Installation Artist. Hastings’ practice is informed by 1960s minimalism and the idea of created space. Her works, which she describes as “sculptuations – a spatial architecture that loops back on itself”, are sculptural situations concerned with the activation of real space through objects and form, and the active participation of the viewer. Hastings was included in the inaugural Primavera exhibition at the MCA, Sydney in 1992. Since then she has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally. Hastings’ work is held in numerous public collections throughout Australia, including the MCA, Heide Museum, AGNSW, NGV,  AGSA, as well as a number of Museums and corporate collections internationally, particularly in Germany. The ‘sculptural situations’ and ‘architectural follies’ of Gail Hastings have been acknowledged in Europe (especially Germany) and America for their shimmering intelligence and their sharp twists on the minimalist project of urging the viewer into more acute participation with the work. Here sculpture regains architectural integration but not (as in hardcore minimalism) at the cost of everything else. Based on the general pattern of the puzzle or enigma (an actualisable game model) we become involved in elegant watercolour floorplans that tease us towards a missing picture. But what we encounter is a blank, primed canvas (positioned to the left of the watercolour). It’s a bit like discovering that the corpse in the library is nowhere to be found. That empty canvas, what is it? Whole or hole? Perhaps it is a sign of the ideally empty consciousness of the viewer? Hastings' sculptural situation proposes an imaginary alternative world (by using the detective story as a model) for which, like fiction, there is infinite room in the world.