Colourful spots, animals frozen in time, glorious butterfly wings and a skull set with diamonds are just some icons of Damien Hirst’s boundary-redefining career.
Internationally recognised for his irreverent approach to artmaking, blurring the lines between media and expanding their possibilities, Hirst has helped set contemporary art on a practically limitless course.
Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol, grew up in Leeds and moved to London in 1984. While studying at Goldsmiths School of Art from 1986-89, Hirst invented two fundamental series: his ongoing ‘Spot Paintings’, made up of meticulously rendered spheres of random colours arranged in perfect grid systems; and his ‘Medicine Cabinets’, an early investigation into science, medicine and systems of belief and trust that resurfaces across his oeuvre.
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