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Damien Hirst: Pharmacy London

Hardback

Main Details

Title Damien Hirst: Pharmacy London
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Damien Hirst
Designed by Jason Beard
Physical Properties
Format:Hardback
Pages:3800
Dimensions(mm): Height 294,Width 440
Category/GenreIndividual artists and art monographs
ISBN/Barcode 9783869309910
ClassificationsDewey:779.092
Audience
General
Illustrations 3565 Illustrations, color

Publishing Details

Publisher Steidl Publishers
Imprint Steidl Verlag
NZ Release Date 25 June 2020
Publication Country Germany

Description

In 2005 Damien Hirst began photographing every dispensing pharmacy in the Greater London area. Shooting both the individual pharmacists behind their counters and the exterior views of the city's 1,832 chemists, the project has taken over a decade to complete. The images are brought together in their entirety in this extraordinary ten-volume artist's book, which presents a portrait of the city through the people and places that prescribe the medicines we take on a habitual and daily basis. Hirst's career-long obsession with the minimalist aesthetics employed by pharmaceutical companies-the cool colors and simple geometric forms-first manifested in his series of Medicine Cabinets, conceived in 1988 while still at Goldsmiths College. For his 1992 installation Pharmacy Hirst recreated an entire chemist within the gallery space, stating: "I've always seen medicine cabinets as bodies, but also like a cityscape or civilization, with some sort of hierarchy within it. [Pharmacy] is also like a contemporary museum. In a hundred years it will look like an old apothecary." Pharmacy London similarly embodies the artist's realization of an "idea of a moment in time." The publication also, however, reads as a distilled expression of Hirst's continuing belief in the near-religious role medicine plays in our society. What's always got me is that people's belief in their drugs is so unquestionable. Damien Hirst

Author Biography

Born in Bristol in 1965, British artist Damien Hirst employs a varied practice of installation, sculpture, painting and drawing to explore the relationships between art, religion, science, life and death. Iconic works include The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) and For the Love of God (2007). Hirst won the Turner Prize in 1995.