Book | Space Practising Tools | Gail Hastings

by Gail Hastings

with an introduction by Jon Roffe

Space Practising Tools is much like a storybook. The main character is space. In the beginning, we fear it. As life goes on, we learn to ignore our fear and, as a consequence, we learn to ignore space. This makes it difficult to see space in three-dimensional art in which it is central. In Space Practising Tools, the artist Gail Hastings records a practical way to see and to work with ‘actual’ space in art. Her book documents spatial interactions through photographs, watercolours and diagrams of five space practising tools the artist handmade. It aims to develop an eye for space separate from our shared space that we tend not to see. It calls on Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color of 1966 as a precedent in its experimental approach to studio observational procedures. Unlike colour, though, space rests on a process of recognition in the face of self-repulsion. With it, space reinvigorates art as necessary. Without it, space is invisible.

The philosopher Jon Roffe enlivens Space Practising Tools with a historical perspective in his introduction, which unleashes a twist in aesthetic adventures. As seen in his highly renowned inclusive approach to Deleuzian thought, Roffe’s illuminating and erudite attention encourages the book’s reach and applicability in the everyday process of being.