Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst 

Damien Hirst is a conceptual artist who has become a cultural icon of our time. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the young British artists who are known for controversy, using shock tactics and unconventional materials. He has spent his career exploring the relationship between art, life and death. He puts it best himself when he says, “Art’s about life and it can’t really be about anything else … there isn’t anything else’’ Since the late 1980’s Hirst has been using sculpture, installation, painting and drawing to explore and challenge contemporary ideas of life’s big issues such as religion, belief and faith. Hirst’s mother is an Irish catholic which may have been part of inspiring Hirst to ask questions about and challenge the idea of religion in his art work.

In his work ‘pharmacy,1992’ he created an installation with glass cabinets filed with packaged  pills and medicines and office furniture to resemble a pharmacy. The space had three coloured apothecary bottles on the desk to represent earth, wind and fire to bring to mind traditional methods of healing used in ancient times. Hirst commented that ‘in a hundred years’ time this will look like an old apothecary.’ In the centre of the room were pots of honey comb and a fly killer. Hirst wanted to infer that people are drawn to medicine with its promises of relief only to die anyway and possibly a more brutal death than before. Hirst  had created a ‘Temple’ to medicine, putting medicine and science in the same category as other belief and faith systems offering hope, salvation and redemption to its followers.

 In 2005 Hirst exhibited his first major print exhibition; ‘New religion.’ This show used silk screen printing, sculpture, installation and painting to explore his belief that “Science is the new religion.” Hirst again created a ‘Temple’ to medicine; installing his exhibition in All Hallows Church in London in 2007.

The show used medical objects and imagery juxtaposed with religious imagery.  Works shown included a cedarwood crucifix inlayed with pewter pill. This raises idea that people now put more faith in pills, medication and science than the healing properties of a higher power. In the past people may have put their faith in God to cure them of illness whereas now many people put their faith in a doctor. Hirst questions how much we know about medication. We all put our faith in it to cure us but how do we really know it works? Isn’t it just another form of faith?

Hirst also displayed a wooden crucifix displaying photographs of real medical wounds to represent the stigmata of the crucified Christ who ‘died for our sins’. This brings to mind the people who have died and been used as guinea pigs for medical testing to make medicine more effectual for the rest of us.

Hirsts work ‘The soul on Jacob’s ladder’ Uses silk-screen printing to create a butterfly on black background. This suggests to me the idea of the soul as a fleeting occurrence in the scheme of life. Just as the butterfly lives only a very short life only to be replaced by the next, human life is the same; a fragile, fleeting, beautiful but ultimately doomed moment in time.

I am inspired by Hirt’s use of media and materials in an innovative and thought-provoking way to convey his ideas. His work uses metaphor to explain the subject but I feel that the work has a stong an easily understood narrative which appeals to a wide audience. I agree with Hirst’s idea that science is a kind of faith that people believe in which is not fully understood. I do not believe that science is on the level with religion as yet as it offers no promise of after-life or an eternal life as yet….