Damien Hirst Exhibition Opens In Leeds

Damien Hirst

New Show Reconstructs Pharmacy Restaurant in Noting Hill Gate

A major free public exhibition of the work of Damien Hirst is set to open on 15 July in in the artists hometown Leeds.The event traces the development of the artist, whose career started at the Leeds College of Art and Design and took off in at Goldsmiths in London in 1990 with the founding of the YBA’s (Young British Artists) and the Freeze show organized by Hirst ,Emin and Lucas. The show will include important works such as Away from the Flock, one of his first vitrine artworks, which features a sheep suspended in formaldehyde, Trinity-Pharmacology, Physiology, Pathology (2000); Monument to the Living and the Dead (2006),his photo With Dead Head, in which a grinning Hirst, aged 16, posed with a severed human head at the city’s morgue and Butterfly (2004). The most recent pieces of the British artist will also be exhibited, such as Poison (2010). Other Subjects close to Hirst such as birth, illness, death and religion are covered in the exhibition and works have been sourced from private and public collections. Hirst’s Pharmacy restaurant is partially reconstructed as part of the exhibition. The Restaurant in London’s trendy Notting Hill Gate was completely decorated with the  artist’s works. It closed in 2003 and the contents were auctioned at Sotheby’s raising £11 million. The works included a  large molecular model representing Hirst’s DNA. The Leeds Art Gallery exhibition will be the first dedicated display of Hirst’s work ever seen in Leeds, and will trace the artist’s career from his student days to his later works after he had established himself as one of the world’s highest profile artists. The key ideas behind his career – birth, illness, death and religion – will all be identifiable in the display, and it will include one of his seminal works ‘Away from the Flock’ which was first exhibited in 1994 at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Following the successes of 2009 and 2010, 21 museums and galleries across the UK (including 17 venues outside of London and Edinburgh) in 2011 will be showing ARTIST ROOMS exhibitions and displays from the collection assembled by Anthony d’Offay ARTIST ROOMS On Tour is an inspired partnership with the Art Fund – the fundraising charity for works of art, making available the ARTIST ROOMS collection of international contemporary art to galleries throughout the UK. ARTIST ROOMS is jointly owned by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland and was established through The d’Offay Donation in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments. The exhibition has kindly been sponsored by Leeds-based solicitors, Walker Morris.

The exhibition continues 15 July until 30 October 2011 at Leeds Art Gallery.

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