Gail Hastings’ practice is centred on physical space. In the late 1980s, her earliest experiments in the medium on completing undergraduate studies shaped her first exhibited artworks. These works stem from influences that include Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse, Donald Judd’s 1960s work characterised as Minimal Art at the time, and Ian Burn’s Xerox Book that Hastings returned to repeatedly on discovering it in her art college library. 

Outside these influences, Hastings’ study of space at college was self-taught as space was not an art concern, nor did it become one for some time. Inside these influences, any Woolf expert would be hard pressed to see how To the Lighthouse could be a harbinger for Hastings’ spatial practice.

Nevertheless, to find the constituent organisms that generated the spatial genetics of this current exhibition, one need look no further than untitled (with magazine), 1989, This Performance — A Passing Thought, 1989, Floor plan: Empty, except, 1990, and Room for Love, 1990.