Damien Hirst was born in Bristol. He studied at Jacob Kramer College of Art, in Leeds between 1983 and 1985 and at Goldsmiths College, University of London between 1986 and 1989.
“Art’s about life and it can’t really be about anything else ... there isn’t anything else.”
In 1987, he conceived and curated a group exhibition entitled Freeze. The show is commonly acknowledged to have been the launching point not only for Hirst, but for a generation of British artists.
Since the late 1980s, Hirst has employed a varied practice of installation, sculpture, painting and drawing to explore the complex relationship between art, life and death. Through his work he investigates and challenges contemporary belief systems, and dissects the uncertainties at the heart of human experience.
Since 1987, over eighty solo Damien Hirst exhibitions have taken place worldwide, and his work has been included in over 260 group shows. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1995.
Damien Hirst’s most renowned and acclaimed works include The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a tiger shark in a glass tank of formaldehyde; For The Love of God (2007), a platinum cast of an eighteenth-century skull covered in 8,601 diamonds and Pharmacy (1992), a life-size recreation of a chemist's shop.
