Damien Hurst
http://www.damienhirst.com/artworks/catalogue?category=10
Exhibitions: Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector
Barbican Art Gallery, London, United Kingdom
http://www.barbican.org.uk
12 February 2015 – 25 May 2015
Group Exhibition
A selection of Hirst's extraordinary collection of anatomical models, taxidermy, specimen and skeletons are exhibited alongside an 'Entomology Cabinet' in this major exhibition of the personal collections of post-war and contemporary artists.
A selection of Damien Hirst's extraordinary collection of anatomical models, taxidermy, specimens and skeletons form part of the Barbican's major exhibition of the personal collections of post-war and contemporary artists. Ranging from mass-produced memorabilia and popular collectibles to one-of-a-kind curiosities, rare artefacts and specimens, these collections provide insight into the inspirations, influences, motives and obsessions of artists.
While some artists are connoisseurs, others accumulate hoards of objects, never letting anything go. Many live with and make direct use of their collections and others keep them under wraps or in storage. Collecting objects for research and study is key to the practice of many artists in the exhibition. Presented alongside examples of their work, their collections, in turn, help to elucidate their art.
Medicine Cabinets, 2011
While some artists are connoisseurs, others accumulate hoards of objects, never letting anything go. Many live with and make direct use of their collections and others keep them under wraps or in storage. Collecting objects for research and study is key to the practice of many artists in the exhibition. Presented alongside examples of their work, their collections, in turn, help to elucidate their art.
Medicine Cabinets, 2011You can only cure people for so long and then they’re going to die anyway. You can’t arrest decay but these medicine cabinets suggest you can.”
Hirst began work on the ‘Medicine Cabinets’ whilst in his second year at Goldsmiths with ‘Sinner’ (1988). Constructing the MDF unit at home, he filled it with the empty packaging of his grandmother’s medication, which he'd requested she left him on her death.
He then created a group of twelve which, explaining, “I like it when there is more than one way of saying something, like songs on an album”, he titled after the twelve tracks on the Sex Pistol’s album ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ (1977), with two named after ‘God Save the Queen’, (‘God’ (1989) and ‘god’ (1989)).
In their arrangement of objects the cabinets link Hirst’s earlier collages (1983 - 1987) to his later work. The used packages that fill the cabinets, described by Hirst as “empty fucking vessels”, were originally arranged as if the cabinet were itself a body, with each item positioned according to the organs it medically related to. However, this system did not last and the “minimalist delicious colours” of the designs swiftly became the most important criterion for their arrangement within each cabinet. Hirst has likened the minimalist packaging to the work of Sol Le Witt and Donald Judd: “They’re not flamboyant are they? They’re not allowed to sell themselves, except in a very clinical way. Which starts to become funny.”
The works explore the distinction between life and death, myth and medicine. Hirst notes: “You take a medicine cabinet and you present it to people and it’s just totally believable. I mean a lot of the stuff is about belief, I think, and the ‘Medicine Cabinets’ are just totally believable.”
<M865/250 Infertility (male), light_micrograph_SPL.jpg>, 2007
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