Missing

Four friends gather to take comfort in their card-carrying doubt of contemporary art while, in a five-page plot, readers suspect they have missed whatever they are meant to get.

These are two of four sculptuations that comprise Missing. The first of the four is the book’s cover that goes ‘missing’ in each of the other three. This is the sort of thing that happens in a sculptuation — which is neither sculpture nor painting, but a three-dimensional work of art. Strange, since these four sculptuations present as watercolours in a book and nothing like the sculpture we see in a museum. Three-dimensional space is real and not pictorial, isn't it? Need the real go missing for the imaginary to exist?

It is a tireless question for visual artists, especially sculptors such as Gail Hastings. Even so, the question finds some rest in a foreword by art historian Richard Shiff who discusses the being (or non-being) of Missing.