Damien Hirst (B. 1965)
Spin, Spin, Sugar (from In a spin, the action of the world on things, Volume II)
signed twice, 'Damien Hirst' (lower right); titled 'Spin spin sugar' (lower left) and dated '03.05.02'(upper right)
watercolour and crayon on colour etching
43½ x 35⅞in. (110.5 x 91cm.)
Etching executed in 2002, hand-coloured in 2006, this work is taken from one of five unique portfolio sets

Provenance:
Private Collection, London.
Private Collection.
Anon. sale, Cornette de Saint-Cyr, 28 June 2010, lot 164.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.

λ Please see our Conditions of Sale for definitions of cataloguing symbols.

Specialist Notes:

‘The work’s simple. We have to keep everything simple, anyone can do it, anyone can make beautiful drawings. It’s as simple as that: making beautiful drawings’ (D. Hirst, quoted in E. Lullin and F.O. Simm (eds.), Contemporary Art in Print, London 2006, p. 314).

With the series In spin, the action of the world on things, Volume I and Volume II Damien Hirst further developed the concept of spin drawings and paintings, which he had started in 1993, and took them into the print medium. After being approached in 2002 by Booth-Clibborn to commission what became one of the most expensive print projects in Britain, Hirst and his assistants built a rotating machine and attached copper plates cut in specific sizes to create two series of prints out of twenty-three and fourteen etchings respectively. Hirst would draw on the plates as they rotated and would also include the title, date and signature, using his mirror writing which resulted in a childlike style. The work presented here is one of five unique versions that were taken from the main edition and hand-coloured by Hirst himself. The titles of the works were coined by the artist with a DJ-friend in an associative way. Exhibiting Hirst’s long-standing affinity to popular music, they all include words related to the act of ‘spinning’ and they refer to quotations from popular songs. In the work presented here, Spin, Spin, Sugar refers to the song title of British trip-hop group Sneaker Pimps.

Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.