While in Munich, in 1997, for an exhibition of my work at Galerie Köstring/Maier, Stephan Maier asked me for the list of Encyclopaedias in my work. ‘What list?’, I replied, somewhat dismayed, as the thought of compiling one had never before crossed my mind; even though a list — whereby each new encyclopaedia can be made in mind of those previous to it — seems such an obvious and conceptually responsible, if not conceptually ‘turned-on’, thing to do. And yet with one swift ‘what list?’ I perhaps unwittingly — if not importantly — relayed something decisive about my work: that any such conceptualism in it is ‘turned-off’.

Nonetheless upon my return to Australia — intrigued to find out what a list such as this might reveal — I set out to compile it. Though I was quick to discover two unexpected things. Firstly, that compiling such a list is an odious task and perhaps best left amidst a stack of papers, forgotten. Only the titles of my works are listed in documentation, not the encyclopaedias in the works. To extract the encyclopaedia’s titles requires an archaeological dig into notes intended but never taken, and files meant but never made. Which leaves me repeatedly deploring my non-existent ability to take photographs as I peer into their fuzzy hues in order to extract an encyclopaedia’s title.

Yet after braving such odds and compiling the beginnings of a list, I gave up. Not because it proved too odious, but because I discovered the second unexpected thing which left me too aghast. The list taking shape before me appeared entirely ‘programmed’, as though based on a pre-planned scheme; which is a contradiction given there is no pre-planned regime behind the encyclopaedias, at all. And yet I could now see why Stephan Maier asked for ‘the’ list.

This raised a dilemma: should I ‘cover-up’ this gaping lack of a conceptually driven encyclopaedic empire that dictates each new encyclopaedia, by compiling the list as though an intended part of my enterprise, all along, rather than letting an encyclopaedia stem from the needs of an individual work, itself? Or observe the fact that the very thought of doing such a thing, quite frankly, appalls me.

You see,  the encyclopaedias and their titles are a by-product of the work — not its purpose. They are the fingerprints found at the scene of the crime that may help investigators determine what is, and what is not, a part of that crime. They are not, however, the actual crime. To force the encyclopaedias into a programmed conformity to fudge some phoney conceptual credentials, would involve a shift of focus from the work to one of its by-products; a shift, for me, that would be a crime in that it would bring about the end of the work. Which does raise the question of what, then, is the work’s purpose, its focus, if not some conceptual paradigm?

For those readers who may have ventured into the realms of the artists’ run space Store 5 near Chapel Street, Melbourne, back in July 1989,  and who may have seen there the first work I publicly exhibited — untitled (with magazine) — or another that soon followed at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces — This Performance — A Passing Thought — you may very well say that there is nothing to focus on at the centre of my work, that there is no purpose or point save an empty space for a passing thought. Yet this space for thought is, for me, far from nothing. Otherwise I would not have repeatedly outlined it, again and again, in every work I have made since; all being, it seems, a repetition of these first two. Sure, there is no diabolical world catastrophe documented at the work’s centre to briefly disguise our guilt in engaging with the aesthetic, seemingly functionlessness, realm of art; and thereby allow us — ever so briefly — to feel justified. Comparatively, the empty space at the centre of a sculptural situation does seem like a big fat nothing. But far from being so, it is instead a sensuous space for thought — a compassionate space for the recognition of our own thought and the responsibility that that requires. Rather than being ‘nothing’ — as far as I can see — this so-called empty space is most necessary in all that inspires or haunts. For which reason I am continually engaged by it and continually try to answer its call.

The role of the encyclopaedias is not unlike the role performed by the four corner blocks and floorplan demarcations seen in these two early works; that of outlining the seemingly empty intersubjective space at the centre of a sculptural situation.  These floor delineations are now not only found in the encyclopaedias that accompany the work, but so too is the movement of one’s imagination between the two-dimensional representation of an object on a page, where one’s thoughts tend to roam in saturated colour (no matter how black and white the image might be or whether the image is relayed by words, instead), to the real presence of that same object in our generally unpronounced, and thereby less colourful, actuality of 'real' space — which we tend to see as ‘nothing’. It is this movement of thought in a sculptural situation that requires one’s memory not of what is past but of what is present, no matter how contradictory that might seem, in order to pronounce ‘what is real’ more fully.

And so in compiling this list I have been reminded of all this, once more. Without the promptings, however, of the curator Natasha Bullock at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on the occasion of my exhibition there, Stephan Maier’s request of ten years ago would not have crossed my mind, again, but have remained buried deep amidst a stack of papers destined for the bin in which I hid it from time’s good keeping, back then. My thanks, therefore, go to both of them.

The list is still incomplete. Also, it is not a list of all the works I have made and exhibited. For which reason I could not help but notice — while compiling it — a nascent list of pre-encyclopaedic works; floorplans from which the encyclopaedias grew, to then carry. It is a list that perhaps reads as a fitting conclusion to an introduction on the encyclopaedias in my work.

Gail Hastings,
April 2007

NB: The first and I think last time I called my work ‘installation’ was in 1989 with the first work I publicly exhibited — untitled (with magazine). I had not at that stage understood that what I make is different. While others, regrettably, have not observed this and have continued to call my work ‘installation’, for want of a better word I recognised my work as ‘sculpture’ up until 1997 — when I then registered ‘sculptural situations’ with the ‘art authorities’ (see the exhibition catalogue for ‘On Dialogue’, curator Anne Marie Freybourg, Haus Am Waldsee, Berlin, 1997)

 

FLOORPLANS:

	untitled (with magazine) 1989 Store 5, Melbourne, 1989; Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Melbourne, 1998, curator Max Delany
	This Performance — A Passing Thought 1989 Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, 1989
	Floor plan: Empty, except 1990 floorplan's units of measurement –  12 inconsequences = 1 thought, 3 thoughts = 1 conversation, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, 1990; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1992, curator Linda Michael
	Floor plan: Gambling is a Mathematical Situation 1991 floorplan's units of measurement – 1mn (meaning) = 10d (decisions), 1d (decision) = 10m (moments), 1m (moment) = 10in (indecisions), work’s title - Medium: Marked Cards 1991;  artists’ page in Otis Rush (Adelaide) #6/7, 1991, editor Ken Bolton
	divisions between friends 1991 floorplan’s units of measurement – 1 Hope = 12 Circumstances, 1 Ci = 12 Immeasurabilities, 1 Im = 12 Deliberations, Australian Perspecta 1991, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, curator Victoria Lynn
	Room for Love 1991 Store 5, Melbourne, 1990; RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 1990, curator Robert Owen; Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Melbourne, 1995, curator Juliana Engberg; Centenary Pools, Brisbane, 1996, curator David Pestorius; Pestorius Sweeney House, Brisbane, 1999, curator Ben Curnow; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2005, curator Max Delany
	measuring subjectivity 1992 floorplan’s units of measurement - lost measurements; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1992, curator Linda Michael
	a page torn from a secret 1993 scale – 1:80; caption – moment 4:43pm; in A Sculpture by Gail Hastings: a page torn from a secret, 1993, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 1993
	untitled (shifts, meanings and moments) 1993 floorplan’s units of measurement – 12 shifts = 1 meaning, 3 meanings = 1 moment, accompaniment to a performance by Shelley Lasica, Temporal, 185 Flinders Lane 1993
	flower power 1960s/1990s 1993 scale – one as to many; Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, 1993; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1994, curator Sue Cramer; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1997, curator Ben Curnow (public collection)
	Spelling Mistakes 1993 Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, 1993 (private collection)
	Truth’s Spatial Probability 1993 Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, 1993 (private collection)
	Library no. 5 1993 Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, 1993 (private collection)