Damien Hirst Unveils First Solo Exhibition At His Newport Street Gallery

Damien Hirst Newport Street Gallery

Damien Hirst has announced his first solo exhibition at his Newport Street Gallery, London, from 7 October 2020 – 7 March 2021. Titled ‘End of a Century’, the exhibition will feature over fifty artworks spanning Hirst’s formative years as a student in the 1980s to becoming one of Britain’s leading contemporary artists during the 1990s.

Hirst has reflected on the complex relationships between beauty, religion, science, life and death

Rarely exhibited together, the works in ‘End of a Century’ will include some of Hirst’s most iconic series, including Natural History, Spot Paintings, Spin Paintings and Medicine Cabinets.

Damien Hirst Newport Street Gallery
Damien Hirst Unveils Newport Street Gallery Exhibition

Throughout his career, Hirst has reflected on the complex relationships between beauty, religion, science, life and death. He has said: “Art’s about life and it can’t really be about anything else. There isn’t anything else.”

Works which have not been exhibited before include Art’s About Life, the Art World is About Money (1998), which depicts an auction house scene framed within a glass and steel case, Up, Up and Away (1997), in which three ducks are suspended in formaldehyde, Waster (1997), a vitrine filled with medical waste and Prototype for Infinity (1998), a large-scale pill cabinet. Also on show will be some of Hirst’s first collages of found objects created during the mid-1980s.

Hirst first came to public attention in London in 1988 when he conceived and curated the group exhibition ‘Freeze’ during his second year at Goldsmiths, which launched a new wave of British artists who would go on to reinvent contemporary art.

Works from this period will be on show at Newport Street Gallery, including Hirst’s early Spot Paintings, which would become one of his most recognised series. After discovering conceptual and minimalist art as a student, Hirst began to explore using pure colour as the principle for an artwork. Hirst’s first examples of this, 7 Pans (1987) and Pink Boxes (1988), will also feature in the exhibition.

‘End of a Century’ will include works from Hirst’s first series of Medicine Cabinets,named after the tracks on the Sex Pistols’ 1977 album Never Mind the Bollocks, some of his early works in formaldehyde, including Myth Explored, Explained, Exploded(1993) and Chicken (1993), and Hymn (1999), a 20-foot-high painted bronze sculpture inspired by an anatomical model belonging to Hirst’s son.

Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol and grew up in Leeds, England. He moved to London in 1984 and studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths college from 1986 to 1989. Hirst was awarded the Turner Prize in 1995. Since 1987, over 90 solo Damien Hirst exhibitions have taken place worldwide and his work has been included in over 300 group shows. In 2012, Tate Modern, London presented a major retrospective survey of Hirst’s work in conjunction with the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. In April 2017, he presented his most complex project to date, ‘Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable’, across two museum spaces in Venice.

His work features in major collections including the British Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate, the Stedelijk Museum, the Yale Center for British Art, The Broad Collection, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Fondazione Prada, and Museo Jumex, among many others.

In line with the latest Government guidelines on COVID-19, there will be extra precautions in place at Newport Street Gallery to provide a safe environment for both visitors and staff, including a timed entry system and a one-way route throughout the gallery. Entry to Newport Street Gallery is free but visitors are required to book an advance ticket through the website: www.newportstreetgallery.com.

End of a Century 7 October 2020 – 7 March 2021  Newport Street Gallery 1 Newport Street London SE11 6AJ

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