BIOGRAPHY

Damien Hirst

In July 1988 in his second year at Goldsmiths College, Hirst was the main organiser of an independent student exhibition, Freeze, in a disused London Port Authority administrative block in London's Docklands. He gained sponsorship from the London Docklands Development Corporation. The show was visited by Charles Saatchi, Norman Rosenthal and (Sir) Nicholas Serota, thanks to the influence of Goldsmiths' lecturer Michael Craig-Martin.

After graduating Hirst was included in New Contemporaries show and in a group show at Kettles Yard Gallery in Cambridge. Seeking a gallery dealer, he first approached Karsten Schubert, but was turned down.

In 1990, in liaison with Hirst, his friend Carl Freedman, along with Billee Sellman, curated two influential "warehouse" shows, Modern Medicine and Gambler in a Bermondsey former factory they designated "Building One". Saatchi arrived at the second show in a green Rolls Royce and, according to Freedman, stood open-mouthed with astonishment in front of (and then bought) Hirst's first major "animal" installation, 'A Thousand Years', consisting of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head.

Hirst had his first solo exhibition in 1991 entitled In and Out of Love at the Woodstock Street Gallery in London; a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and a further exhibition at the Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery in Paris. The Serpentine Gallery presented the first survey of the new generation of artists with the exhibition Broken English, in part curated by Hirst. During this period Hirst was introduced to the up and coming art dealer Jay Jopling of White Cube and he has continued to represent him.

In 1993, Hirst's first major international presentation was in the Venice Biennale with the work, 'Mother and Child Divided', a cow and a calf cut into sections and exhibited in a series of separate vitrines.

In 1994, Hirst curated the show, Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away, at the Serpentine Gallery in London, where he exhibited 'Away from the Flock' a sheep in a tank.

In 1995, Hirst won the Turner Prize. New York public health officials banned 'Two Fucking and Two Watching' featuring a rotting cow and bull, because of fears of "vomiting among the visitors". There were solo shows in Seoul, London and Salzburg.

In 1996, No Sense of Absolute Corruption, his first solo show in the Gagosian Gallery in New York was staged. In London the short film, 'Hanging Around', was shown written and directed by Hirst and starring Eddie Izzard.

In 1997 the Sensation exhibition opened at the Royal Academy in London. 'A Thousand Years and other works' by Hirst were included, but the main controversy occurred over other artists' works. It was nevertheless seen as the formal acceptance of the YBAs into the establishment.

in 1998, his critically-acclaimed autobiography/art book, 'I Want To Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now,' was published. Hirst also painted a simple colour pattern for the Beagle 2 probe. This pattern was to be used to calibrate the probe's cameras after it had landed on Mars.

In September 2000, in New York, Larry Gagosian held the Hirst show, Damien Hirst: Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results and Findings. 100,000 people visited the show in 12 weeks and all the work was sold. In September 2003 he had an exhibition Romance in the Age of Uncertainty at Jay Jopling's White Cube gallery in London,

In late 2004, Hirst designed a cover for the Band Aid 20 charity single featuring the "Grim Reaper" with an African child perched on his knee. This was not to the liking of the record company executives and was replaced by reindeer in the snow standing next to a child. 2004 also saw the loss of 17 of Hirst's works in the fire at Momart, the storage and shipping company in London.

In December 2004, 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' was sold by Saatchi to American collector Steve Cohen, for $12 million (£6.5 million). This was the most expensive work by a living artist ever sold. Cohen, a Greenwich hedge fund manager, then donated the work to MoMA, New York.

In March 2005, Hirst exhibited 30 paintings once more at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. These had taken 3 1/2 years to complete. They were closely based on photos, mostly by assistants (who were rotated between paintings) but with a final finish by Hirst.

In February 2006, Hirst opened a major show in Mexico, at the Hilario Galguera Gallery, called The Death of God, Towards a Better Understanding of Life without God aboard The Ship Of Fools The exhibition attracted considerable media coverage as Hirst's first show in Latin America.