by martin s. pribble
article written in january 1998
published in "sadness is in the sky magazine" issue 5

Damien Hirst is best known for his use of animals in his work. These can be alive, dead, decomposing, rotten, preserved, pickled, sliced, diced or even a combination of the above. The animals he uses range from butterflies to flies, pigs to sharks, cows with calf foetuses still in the womb, as well as using large scale photography, painting, sculpture and installation.

But the most interesting thing about Damien Hirst is his attitude towards his art, and the art world in general. He is pushing some commonly held views on art to their boundaries, and beyond, re-evaluating the nature of art at the turn of the millennium. His work makes comments about what it is to be human today, as well as pissing off a lot of British conservatives at the same time.
To give you a good idea of just what is so provocative about Hirst's art, I'll outline the appearance of one piece which caused a stir in Britain in 1995.

An installation entitled Mother and Child, Divided consists of two tanks constructed of glass and steel. Inside the tanks is a 5% formaldehyde solution, and suspended in the formaldehyde is a whole cow, with a foetus still in its womb. Both mother and calf are bisected perfectly, and the two tanks are positioned so that the viewer can walk straight through the middle of the dead beasts, to view the entrails of both animals. The formaldehyde solution preserves the animals perfectly.

Animal Liberationists were furious when Hirst exhibited this winning piece in the $40,000 Tate Gallery's Turner Prize. They claimed that the piece was demeaning to the animals, that it was cruel to kill a mother and baby cow in "the name of art". But what they didn't know was that the cow had broken its back during a stillbirth and was put down by a vet, and that Hirst bought it from a nearby knackery. The intention of the piece is hard to ascertain, but as is the way with so much of today's art, it is up to the viewer to decipher. But what it does do is bring the dead animal on your dinner plate to a flesh and blood level. It makes meat eaters realize where their porterhouse steak is coming from, not from a vacuum sealed foam backed slab at the supermarket. It makes vegetarians realize that all that's dead is not necessarily murder. It shakes art conservatives out of their plush middle class existences back into the world of physical reality. The only ones it should be offensive to are "...cows and meat-eaters."

In another piece entitled Waiting for Inspiration, Red, Damien Hirst has constructed a virtual world for the housefly. In a glass chamber separated by a permanently wet sheet with a hole in it. On one side of the sheet the flies hatch from their pupae forms and take flight. On the other side of the sheet there is a rotting cow's head upon which the flies feed. Also on the other side is the Insectocutor, in the form of a bug zapper. One could imagine the piece is self perpetuating: the flies hatch and feed on the cow's head; the flies mate and lay eggs in the cow's head; the flies are consumed by the predator, the Insectocutor; the new flies hatch and feed on the cow's head and are eventually zapped. And so on… In effect, the entire life cycle of any animal is represented in literal terms: life, food, sex, reproduction, and death. It represents all life on the basest level. Other works include:

-a tank with butterfly pupae, which hatch and become stick to wet enamel paint becoming brightly colored dots on the wet canvasses,

-whole bovine couples, preserved in their moment of copulating, hermetically sealed in large tanks,

-a 5 metre tiger shark suspended in a formaldehyde solution in a 6.4 metre glass and steel tank entitled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (Charles Saatchi added this piece to his collection for a very large sum,)

-a whole sheep suspended upright in a tank of formaldehyde solution,

-a piece on a revolving tri-vision billboard, showing on one screen Vaseline and a cucumber, and on the next a Hammer and a peach titled The Problems with Relationships,

-numerous pieces using household paint on canvas of large colored dots,

-a giant ashtray.

There's been controversy at almost every Damien Hirst exhibition. From Animal Liberationists to City Health Inspectors, to Art Critics. Many people find his work offensive, but at the same time, many find it irresistible even with the exorbitant pricetags ($300,000 for some pieces!) But the controversy and hype only served to make his career bloom! David Bowie is the proud owner of a pocket sized Hirst, a preserved fish, which he keeps with at all times.

Hirst is also a film maker, making his own feature film called God Games, and earlier doing a filmclip for the band Blur for their song Country House.

Hirst is a success story if ever there was one, up there with Jeff Koons in terms of self promotion, and up there with Picasso in terms ingenuity.

His work touches on some issues that we should all be tackling, (much like Andres Serrano,) telling us to re-evaluate our stubborn and hard-line views of right and wrong in a world where the edges of issues become blurred. But don't think that Hirst is all politically correct. Far from it. In fact, in conversation Hirst seems to be rather removed from the political side of his work. Upon winning the Tate Gallery Turner Prize he stated "It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-level art and a chainsaw." In an interview with Sarah Borruso from 1996 he states: "The only interesting people are the ones who say 'Fuck Off.' This is what I think." Hirst has held exhibitions in Australia on two other occasions, but never in Melbourne. Rumors are he'll be telling us to "Fuck off!" in person in Melbourne very soon at Kirkcaldy Davies Gallery some time in mid 1998, so keep your eyes and nostrils peeled. Let's hope (for art's sake) that we don't have a repeat of the Serrano exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria of 1997.

Or maybe (for Hirst's sake) we should!