Damien Hirst has always had an extraordinary instinct for picking his moments. Back in his student days at London’s Goldsmiths, he made a thunderous impact on the London art scene with a show that would one day be credited with launching the world-changing Young British Artists (YBA) phenomenon. You can currently see him as a spiky-haired 23-year-old on the BBC Two documentary Sensationalists, moving through the crowds at the opening of his 1988 exhibition Freeze, a show that made it clear that a new energy and enterprise were afoot in the staid London art world. At a time when the national mood had been dampened by endless financial crises, Hirst’s sheer punky audacity gave British culture the shot in the arm it needed.
Cut to today, and Hirst in his 2022 incarnation – a short, balding 57-year-old – is calmly feeding pieces of his own art into the flames of a glass-fronted furnace. A bit thicker set than in that video, Hirst still cuts a dash in silver trousers and gauntlets as he directs the Burn Event, the climax of his The Currency project, which will see approaching £10m worth of his paintings torched in daily immolations before the work and its accompanying exhibition close on 30 October.
