Damien Hirst Verity Sculpture
October 18, 2012 § 1 Comment
Ilfracombe in Devon is the most recent recipient of the latest Damien Hirst Sculpture. A 65-feet tall 25-ton bronze statue called Verity which shows a heavily pregnant woman holding a sword has been erected in the seaside town for the next 20 years. Needless to say, it has ruffled the feathers of a few of the locals… perhaps they’ll grow to love it in time.
Images from Mail Online
Damien Hirst Retrospective opens at Tate Modern
April 4, 2012 § 2 Comments
Unless you live on another planet (or indeed outside of London), you will be aware of the Damien Hirst exhibition at Tate Modern opening today. Either your eyes will roll to this or you’ll be as excited as me. It would seem predictable that I like his art, so let me explain my relationship with his work;
The year Damien won the Turner prize in 1995 was the year of my art foundation. We were sent down to Tate to write a project on it (his piece was ‘Mother and Child divided’ – the cow and calf in formaldehyde) and I was thrilled he won as I thought it pushed the boundaries of what we expect to see in an art gallery. I already had my Uni place to study Anatomy, so I gave up my art foundation in favour of dissecting cadavers. A gift to commemorate this act from a friend was a little plastic anatomical man, so you can imagine when I saw ‘Hymn’ (below) in 2000 at Saatchi Gallery, I just couldn’t believe it – he still sits on my studio shelf. (I also love scuba diving with sharks, and I travelled to Brooklyn NY to see Hirsts Shark in the Sensation exhibition of 1999… but that’s another story)
In 2008 I had started taking stone carving classes alongside my medical illustration and anatomy/dissection teaching, naturally carving hearts, brains and lungs etc. So when I saw ‘Anatomy of an Angel’ (below) I was blown away. To carve a life sized marble angel is immense in itself (yes, he didn’t do it, it was carved in Italy out of Carrera marble), but that wasn’t the point, he would not humanly be able to make all his ideas real by the limitations of his own hand. Here was a man who had the ideas, and actually had the money to make it happen. Just like ‘For the love of God’ (top image) which cost him £14million in diamonds to make, and was beautiful and breathtaking when I saw it at White Cube. I’d like to think if I was loaded, I’d make art with it.
So whatever you think of Hirst, if it’s ‘art’, if he should ‘make it all himself or not bother’, if you’ve not seen ‘Hymn’,’ Anatomy of an Angel’, or ‘For the Love of God’, maybe swing by the exhibition… you just might love it!
[All images taken from Damien Hirst Site]
See interviews with Hirst on Channel 4OD
Chris Bracey: Neon Skull
March 9, 2012 § Leave a Comment
There’s something about neon that can make one giddy. Maybe it’s that ‘meditative’ feeling when you’ve had a couple of pints and can’t stop staring at the fruit machine, or perhaps it’s the squealings of excited children from a fairground, or maybe even the kebab shop OPEN sign flashing at 4am when you’re ravenous. Chris Bracey has taken this notion and become a household name of neon art lovers and celebrities alike (just read a bit about his notoriety here). That aside, the wallpaper of Daniel Poole Gallery (who represent Bracey) on Twitter just makes me gasp! So you can imagine, that finding out he created a homage to Damien Hirst with ”Skull & Butterfly” (above bottom) made me even happier. The pictures of it at Kinetica Art Fair 2012 (above top and middle) show it’s FATE message. Shame I don’t happen to have a spare £18,500 knocking about. Lordy!
Damien Hirst Catalogue
May 23, 2011 § Leave a Comment
White Cube Gallery, London is preparing the Damien Hirst catalogue Raisonne for publication and is asking any current and former owners of the artist’s work to get in touch. If you’re one of the less wealthy Hirst fans who doesn’t currently own an original artwork, don’t despair! You can choose from a selection of 313 products from the vast Hirst trademark collection here. Prices range from £1.05 for a postcard to £36,800.00 for a Hallucinatory Skull.
