Terminus (The Artist's Studio) : Amanda Farr

"The studio is the centre of the artist’s world. It is a workspace and living space, a place where the artist exists. A creative place, a thinking space, a space that encapsulates who and what the artist is... The studio is the arena for exploration and expression, a workshop for discovery and the relay of information: a learning space for artist and visitor alike. A place that betrays the mental ramblings of the artist and attempts to awaken a mental state in the viewer"
David Hastie 2003

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

In Terminus (the artist’s studio) Hastie has edged away from the theatrical towards the creation of another kind of reality. Terminus is a re-construction; a (literal) transportation of the artist’s working environment from a vast cow barn on a farm near Swansea to the clean white cube of the gallery space. This is in itself an incongruity. When visiting David Hastie’s studio on the farm one enters it from the barn’s interior, and its structure and contents meld with those of the cowshed; the corrugated sheet walls, chicken wire, crude wooden shelving, an old panelled door – all are materials that are to hand on the farm, and the studio emerges out of that environment and is experienced through that environment

Seen in the gallery, the studio is thrown into sharp focus, its very essence pressing upon our senses: the smell of pitch, creosote and rusty metal, the feel of splintery wood and wire mesh, the visual contrast of cool, pristine gallery walls with the warmth of weathered planks. Terminus invites us in, and to explore this environment is an adventure, an expedition. We approach as children or explorers coming across a newly found den or hideaway, a little tentative and apprehensive, both excited and unnerved by the promise of discovery, and bringing with us a sense of wonderment

Terminus is no diorama or stage set made from plaster or painted canvas backdrop to trick the eye. This structure is the real and the now - the vital centre and the tangible world of the artist. Miniature house-like objects, simply constructed from recycled iron sheet, are stacked in workmanlike fashion, stored like ideas for future projects. A ladder leans, waiting for use. A stairway climbs to a first floor shed, and we yearn to clamber up and peer into its interior. To enter this studio is to be invited to an engagement with the artist’s thought processes, and this is a rare and privileged position for the visitor. This is Hastie’s Merzbau, where he, like Kurt Schwitters, has constructed a physical world that is complete, that is filled up with the artist’s most personal and individualistic ideas made concrete

terminus n. (pl.-uses, -i), (station at) end of railway line, bus-route, etc.; point to which motion or action tends

depot, terminal, destination, end point, endpoint, termination

n :the ultimate goal for which something is done
n :a place where something ends or is complete

Amanda Farr : Oriel Davies Gallery : 2003