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| david hastie |
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David Hastie creates gallery-based and site-specific installations. He utilizes a theatrical technique of presentation and works with an eclectic mix of materials ranging from railway sleepers, scaffolding planks and sand to corrugated iron and old roofing lead. Material reclaimed from his rural surroundings and from industry He has exhibited since 1993, with solo exhibitions in the UK and Australia and has shown in group exhibitions in Ireland, Italy and the UK. In 2001 he was selected to represent Wales in 'Transforms', an exhibition that staged the work of eight artists from across the globe at the G8 Summit on the Environment and he has been selected eight times for The National Eisteddfod of Wales, winning an award in 1998 Born in Carmarthen in 1967, he lives and works in Wales, UK
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'David Hastie is one of the most interesting and individual artists working in Wales today. His extraordinary constructions affect us by their play with scale, their powerful presence and their sheer physicality. They loom large and insistent, part menacing, part humorous. With many of his installations, Hastie has combined delicate miniature models with roughly hewn gigantic structures to create a stage where narratives and dreams can be rehearsed' Amanda Farr
'Working outside fashion or trend, he looks at the world and the objects within it with an ancient eye and yet, his regard is in no way nostalgic, nor does it express a desire to escape from the present. Instead, his works seem to take form as a sort of collective archetype which does not remain trapped in the purely autobiographical dimension but establishes through its immediacy - a possible basis for dialogue' Mario Cristiani, Emanuela De Cecco &
Roberto Pinto
'It was Hastie's reaction to the unexpectedly fragile beauty of Central Australia that saw his work take the path it did. He had talked about a 'refuge' in his proposal, a refuge I supposed, as perhaps did he, from an environment overwhelming: too harsh to overcome; too large to completely tame. It would be a tent he would install, within it a buildup of elements of the landscape he would discover; as well as representations of the culture from which he had come; a desk with an overhanging lamp, a chair, hand-modelled lead structures referencing Hastie's own ancestral history. What happened, I believe, was an intuitive reaction to the nature of space-claiming; a replica on small of the meaning behind the structures that we build in order to feel safe: larger than that, a replica of the effects on the Indigenous people of this country of the colonization of their land' Harriet Gaffney
'Hastie is a necessary artist. If art is a means by which society can look at itself and communicate with itself, then Hastie's work is an essential ingredient of our current society's dialogue. He makes work that is like no-one else's, whether consciously or unconsciously done, his work touches on some truths about the general and universal human condition, whilst utilizing a vocabulary drawn literally from his own backyard' Iwan Bala
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Exhibition:
Albion Mill
National Eisteddfod of Wales 2008
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